2013
Google To Close Bump And Flock, Its Recently Acquired File Sharing Apps
Bump and Flock, the file sharing apps Google acquired last fall, will be shut down by the end of this month. Both apps will stop working and be removed from…
Confirmed: Snapchat Hack Not A Hoax, 4.6M Usernames And Numbers Published
A site called SnapchatDB.info has saved usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts and made the information available for download. SnapchatDB says that it got the information through a…
Congratulations, Planet Earth! We made it another 365 days without crashing into the sun. Go team! It’s the end of the year, and that means three things: booze, ridiculous…
Dell Looks To Set A New Tone For Its Private Life
The story of Dell is business legend: How a kid starting in his dorm room, hiding computer parts in the bathroom when his parents visited, managed to build a computing…
I, Spammer
As I approach the half-way mark of my crowdfunding project, I wanted to address the thing that makes me feel the worst about this whole process: the spam. As I…
How the Internet’s Founders Feel About The NSA Scandal
As the co-fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn tend to be pretty protective of their digital masterpiece. Both were early Defense Department engineers of the communications architecture…
2013 was a heady year: a time of hope; a time for sadness; a time for twerking; and a time for doge. But it was also a time for gadgets. As…
Sony Rumored To Be Considering A Windows Phone Handset In 2014
According to The Information, Sony could release a Windows Phone device, diversifying its mobile device lineup, bolstering Microsoft, and perhaps demonstrating a growing wish among hardware firms to hedge against…
LG May Be Taking Another Stab At The Wearable Activity Tracking Formula
CES 2014 is — amazingly enough — just around the corner, along with enough new gadgetry to fill several lifetimes. Last year we saw a glut of activity trackers pop…
Why 2014 Is The Year You Change
I stopped going to classes. I had a scholarship that paid all my living expenses ($1,200/month) so I didn’t want to quit (ugh, and get a job?). So I stayed…
Apple Says It Has Never Worked With NSA To Create iPhone Backdoors, Is Unaware Of Alleged DROPOUTJEEP Snooping Program
Apple has contacted TechCrunch with a statement about the DROPOUTJEEP NSA program that detailed a system by which the organization claimed it could snoop on iPhone users. Apple says that…
Makers Of Oscar-Shortlisted Documentary “The Act Of Killing” Turn To BitTorrent For Promotion
BitTorrent has been pitching itself as a legitimate way for content creators to promote their works, and now the company is announcing what may be its most noteworthy partnership yet…
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ Salary To Get 50% Bump To $3M In 2014
Remember Qwikster? Wall Street doesn’t. The AP is reporting this morning that the Netflix CEO will get a healthy pay raise in 2014. According to a regulatory filing, Reed Hastings’…
Samsung Got A Bigger Tablet Boost For Christmas Than Apple, According To Onswipe
Touchscreen publishing company Onswipe has good news for Samsung. As Onswipe’s Chief Marketing Officer Jason Baptiste put it in an email, “Samsung clearly won Christmas when it comes to tablets.”…
Sprint Wants To Revive Nextel As A Business Brand, Merge Boost + Virgin Mobile Into ‘Sprint Freedom’
It was only six months ago that Sprint decommissioned and shut down the Nextel iDEN network, and while the carrier has no plans to bring that legacy network back, the…
MaternityCompare Helps Expectant Parents Find Healthcare Providers
Choosing an obstetrician can be extremely stressful for expectant parents. Additive Analytics, a new startup, hopes to help patients find trustworthy providers with MaternityCompare, its first product. The site pulls…
These Apps Will Help You Make 2014 Less Filthy
This year, several notable apps that connect users with house cleaners have launched or gained traction. These include Homejoy, Exec and laundry service Prim. There are a lot of benefits…
Silicon Valley Hustle: Former Motionloft CEO Accused Of Defrauding Investors
Thanks to a series of high-profile exits and a generally frothy financing environment, it’s not unusual to see successful entrepreneurs spending money at will. But the story of MotionLoft founder…
The fine folks at AdDuplex have provided Paul Thurrott with an early look at their final Windows Phone market data for 2013, giving us in the public a final look…
Revenue-Sharing “Knowledge Community” Teckler Launches Its First Mobile App
Teckler is a site where users get a share of the revenue for the articles, photos, and other media that they post. And with the recent launch of the Teckler…
Microsoft Was Right To Worry That Government Snooping Constituted An ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’
New NSA revelations out this weekend detailed precisely how the NSA’s methods lean on malware and employ cyber attacks in their “snooping,” to use Microsoft’s term. Thus, the NSA’s surveillance…
Medallia’s Amy Pressman And Sequoia’s Doug Leone On Bootstrapping And Vetting Investors
In this three-part series, we hosted Medallia, an enterprise company that offers customer experience management software, and Sequoia partner and board members Doug Leone in the studio. Co-founder and President…
Paul Graham Responds To Critics, Says Y Combinator Is Planning An Event For Female Founders
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham just published a blog post about what he did and didn’t say during a widely-discussed interview with The Information (if you don’t have a subscription,…
Twitter’s Recent Market Correction Doesn’t Mean Its Sky Is Falling
Twitter has had a rough few days in the markets, slipping from north of $74 to just over $60 at the end of trading today. That’s not even half the story, however:…
Netflix Says It’s Testing New $6.99 Single Screen Streaming Plan, But It May Never Roll Out To Everyone
Netflix has informed TechCrunch that it is indeed testing a $6.99 single-stream plan to new users as part of a test. The option appears to some new users after selecting…
73% Of U.S. Adults Use Social Networks, Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top
Facebook may be currently facing question marks over how well it’s faring with younger users, but among those over 18 in the U.S. it remains the social network king. According…
The FitBit App Now Turns The iPhone 5s Into A FitBit
Fitbit has just released a major update to its iOS app for iPhone 5s, allowing the smartphone itself to track steps, distance and burned calories. These are basic features, and…
Business Insider’s Joe Wiesenthal today published an interesting piece on Bitcoin, partially responding to Paul Krugman’s somewhat inscrutable recent blog post that called the cryptocurrency “evil,” and partially answering the…
FAA Selects 6 Sites For Civilian Drone Testing
There are already quite a few drones in use in U.S. airspace, but given that commercial drone usage remains off-limits, most of them are either operated by government agencies or…
Keen On… The 2013 Debacle: Why Gavin Newsom Says The Government Is On A Collision Course With The Future
It may be the holiday season, but Gavin Newsom, California’s tech savvy Lieutenant Governor, is as mad as hell. And he’s not going to take it any more. The fury…