John Biggs
Biggs is a contributor for TechCrunch. He has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can [Tweet him here](http://twitter.com/johnbiggs).
Disclosures: John is an unpaid advisor to Riffle, a social books platform. John is CEO of Freeport Mobile, Inc. Bre Pettis, formerly of Makerbot, is an investor.
CrunchBase profile →Featured Picks from John Biggs
Latest from John Biggs
-
Crunch Network
Let’s meet in Warsaw and Krakow next week
It’s that time again: EuroBiggs arrives in Poland and would like to enjoy a Lech with you all. I’ll be in Poland for a week and would love to meet up in Warsaw on the 13th and in Krakow on the 15th. The Krakow meetup is already set. It will be held at Forum Przestrzenie, 28 Marii Konopnickiej on June 15th at 9pm. All are invited and we’ll hold a mini-pitchoff. You can sign… Read More
-
Crunch Network
The Alvieri Firenze brings a bubbly touch to the traditional watch
Like tea and toddler’s birthday parties, everything is better with bubbles. This interesting new Kickstarter watch has a unique “bubble” or convex track around its face, a feature that will be familiar to folks who like De Bethune and may want something similar… but much, much cheaper. The watch comes in two styles – standard and with a lunar calendar – and… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Startup step-by-step: The battle
Every battle is won before it is fought. This bit of pop wisdom, brought down to us from Sun Tzu and countless motivational speakers, is the koan for a generation of can-do entrepreneurs. But there is another version of this line, one that is less rosy. Every battle is won or lost before it is fought. In the all-singing, all-dancing world of entrepreneurial theatre, the important part is the… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Tronc off
It’s junior year in the elongated, two-hundred-year long college education of American media and things are getting weird. The nerds are still playing pinochle and hanging out in the library but they’re getting antsy. The cool kids are trying new things while the liberal arts majors are getting MBAs. The prankster lacrosse players are being sent to the dean. And then there are… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Whirlpool crowdfunds a beer maker
Like the movie in which Robert DeNiro plays an intern, venerated appliance brand Whirlpool is spreading its wings, dusting off the cobwebs, and crowdfunding a beer maker. The product, called Vessi, ferments and dispenses suds and even has a system for reducing and managing sediment. The system comes from W Labs, Whirlpool’s product design skunkworks, and is part of Indiegogo’s… Read More
-
Crunch Network
360-degree camera maker Jeffrey Martin talks about what it takes to film for VR
This week on the Technotopia podcast I interviewed Jeffrey Martin, the creator of 360Cities and the maker of the Sphericam. Martin is a skilled 360-degree camera operator and has created amazing panoramas of cities around the world. “I’ve been working with VR since the days of CRT monitors,” he said as he explained the challenges and changes coming to us thanks to new… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Dish ships the HopperGo, a tiny little cloud player for TV on the run
Originally announced at CES in January, the minuscule HopperGo is a 64GB USB drive with a built in wireless access point. The little device connects to your Dish Hopper 3 or Hopper 2 – essentially Dish’s DVR – and sucks down up to 100 hours of TV. You can then unplug the little bugger and watch for four hours on one charge through the Dish Anywhere app. When I first pulled… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Heavy Internet use leads to school burnout in teens
As if you didn’t need more proof that your darn kids need to get off the computer and into the back yard, researchers at the University of Helsinki and Department of Psychology have found that excessive Internet use — essentially bordering on addiction — leads to school burnout in teens. There isn’t much detail on the definition of excessive use (you’ll know it… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Boom makes your music sound boomin’ and/or slammin’
Boom for iOS is an app that changes your music, presumably for the better. The app is an equalizer that adds depth and bass to regular MP3 files, turning audio played through even the junkiest of ear buds into something worth listening to complete with better bass and the sort of 3D sound that makes various speakers “appear” in mid-air. Now obviously the changes aren’t… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Zmodo’s Pivot gives you 24/7 monitoring on the cheap
We’ve come a long way from the days of pale beige IP webcams with wonky interfaces and limited recording times. Today’s webcams, like the Zmodo Pivot, are motion-sensing, low-light seeing, and notification-rich cylinders that hide out in secret places and store video for days at a time. In essence webcams have morphed from wonky toys to actual tools and, in the process, have gone… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Technotopia: Haseeb Awan on why the sun is rising on Asian startups
This week’s Technotopia features Haseeb Awan, founder of a YC bitcoins startup who is creating a new way to reduce currency volatility. Haseeb is pretty bearish on the current financial markets but he sees the growth of Asia and India as a true powerhouse that will be able to use all of the cool new stuff the world is building in a very real way. You can download the podcast here or… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Purism builds a secure tablet with physical wi-fi and camera switches
Purism, proud makers of one of the first truly open laptops, is moving into the world of pro-level tablets. Their latest product, the Librem 11, is a tablet that runs any GNU/Linux version (they recommend the ultra-secure Qubes) and can double as a laptop. The company made waves with their 15 and 13 laptops and they are bringing the same level of security to the $1,299 tablet. While that’s… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Chemists create an app that can tell if your beer is skunked
Bummer, dude! That’s what you say when you find out your whole keg of Heiney is totally skunked but it doesn’t matter because you’ll totally still drink it after you finish the pony keg of Sammo’s Irish Red. But what if I told you that folks in Spain have figured out a way to use an app to tell if your beer is a mess? Whoa, right? Whoa, indeed. Chemists at the… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Ransomware maker TeslaCrypt shuts down after releasing master key
Ransomware makers TeslaCrypt have shut down after saying sorry for all the damage they caused. This move, which has allowed anti-ransomware researchers to create a fool-proof decryption app, TeslaDecoder. The ransomware would hunt down and encrypt video games on your Windows PC, something that I suspect upset quite a few gamers in the few years that the malware was active. The news means that… Read More
-
Crunch Network
DistroKid’s music payment system now lets you send cash to everyone on a track
Philip Kaplan’s DistroKid is a system designed to let musicians post their music to streaming services like Spotify and iTunes and then get royalties when their music is played. Thus far Kaplan and his small team have been sending one payment out to each musician and the musicians had to send smaller payments to collaborators and other musicians on the track. Now, however, he’s… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Laugh.ly is a streaming radio app dedicated to comedy
If you, like Dick Van Dyke, love to laugh loud and long and clear, then Laugh Radio hopes you’ll tune in. This standalone audio app offers a searchable achieve of streaming comedy for fans of chortling, guffawing, and snorting. “We’re building great technology from the ground up, designed for spoken word and applied to comedic performances,” said the founder Dave… Read More
-
Crunch Network
HP’s 3D printers pave the way for an interesting future
In the two years since HP announced it was entering the 3D printing space speculation arose regarding what exactly the PC giant would launch? Home 3D printers for the masses? All-in-one manufacturing machines? Amazing teleportation devices? Nope. They launched a big printer for industrial users that prints in full color in a way that is unique in the industry. The bottom line? HP made an… Read More
-
Crunch Network
The Garmin vivofit 3 makes me want to move again
I’ve long been an activity tracker kind of guy. I strapped them all onto my fleshy wrist: the Fitbits, the Nikes, the Polars. I’ve watched circles fill up on my Apple Watch and I’ve watched ghost competitors race me on early GPS watches. But for the past few months I abandoned any wrist-based tracker because the battery in the one I was using kept dying. And so I went… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Author Raj Raghunathan talks about what it takes for smart people to be happy
In my on-going Technotopia series I’ve been talking to designers, coders, and journalists. This time I talk to business professor Raj Raghunathan author of If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy, a book about finding happiness when you’re already firing on all cylinders in a hard-charging career. Raghunathan’s book shows us that there is little correlation… Read More
-
Crunch Network
Don’t copy the Valley, copy Brooklyn
With Silicon Valley pretty much a trash fire right now it would behoove small cities to look elsewhere when trying to create centers of innovation. While Brooklyn, that gem of an island surrounded by bodies of water containing guns, dolphins, and scum, is not perfect, it’s a pretty solid choice for hardware, software, and services startups to emulate. As I’ve traveled around the… Read More
Message Us