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Meet the latest cohort of Acceleprise startups, and the apps they built to make work easier
Acceleprise, a San Francisco-based accelerator for enterprise tech and software-as-a-service startups, held a Demo Day for its third cohort of companies today. The accelerator invests $50,000 into each startup admitted to its program via convertible note financing, taking approximately a 5 percent stake under a $1 million cap. It admits 8-12 companies per cohort, and invests out of a $3.5… Read More
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U.K. carrier Three says it will start trialling ad blocking next month with a 24-hour opt-in test
Back in February, U.K. mobile carrier Three said it would start to offer on its network opt-in ad blocking technology from Shine, potentially reaching 30 million customers in its network. Now the company is getting down to details: It will start to trial ad blocking in June in the U.K., with a 24-hour test for opted-in customers, the company said today. “We believe the current… Read More
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New MoPub report aims to help publishers navigate the ad network landscape
Mobile publishers need to work with at least a few different ad networks — that’s kind of the whole point of ad exchanges like Twitter-owned MoPub. Today the company is releasing a report that should give publishers a little more context when deciding which networks to work with. For starters, the report says that 53 percent of MoPub publishers work with between two and five… Read More
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Spotify seeks more personalized playlists after Discover Weekly finds 40M users
Apple Music, Tidal and, until recently, Spotify, failed at music discovery because they stuck to a blog-style format. But Spotify has cracked the code with a Facebook News Feed-style personalized, frequently updated playlist called Discover Weekly. Spotify now says the playlists have seen 40 million unique users since launching last July, and 5 billion tracks streamed. Read More
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Microsoft is laying off 1,850 to “streamline” its smartphone business, takes $950M charge
Following last week’s news of Microsoft selling off its feature phone business for $350 million, today Microsoft turned its attention to smartphones: the company announced it would lay off 1,850 staff and take a charge of $950 million, including $200 million in severance payments, as it “streamlines” the business to focus on enterprises and niche areas where it feels it… Read More
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Ex-Facebook designers climb charts with adorable game Pinchworm
Funky physics and controls make mobile games fun. You tap against gravity in Flappy Bird, fling on a trajectory in Angry Birds and press to maintain momentum in Tiny Wings. So when two of Facebook’s top designers left to build their own apps, they wanted to bring a new gesture to gaming… and let worms, not birds, be the stars. Pinchworm sounds simple, but its the mapping of the controls… Read More
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Gulülu turns drinking water into a game for kids
Through the power of smart sensors and the magic of the cloud, parched children is on its way to become a thing of the past — at least, if the Gulülu team have anything to say in the matter. The company’s bottle, launching on Kickstarter today, is the newest, most high-tech weapon in the battle to get their kids to imbibe enough liquids throughout the day. Read More
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Twilio ramps up mobile play with programmable SIMs for IoT and handsets with T-Mobile
Twilio stormed into the telecoms market several years ago with a set of services that turned core communications features once controlled by carriers, like text messages and phones numbers, into API-based services that any developer could easily customize and use in whatever app or site she or he chose. Today, the company is unveiling its next step in its bid to take on more telecoms… Read More
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24 more characters, for better and worse
Today Twitter redefined its laws of physics. But while it’s posed as a simplification of the 140-character rule, the change will reshape information density, conversation style and self-promotion in the app. If you want to know what’s happening and why, read TechCrunch’s detailed breakdown of the changes scooped by Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier. Here, we’re going… Read More
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Google makes big changes to its ad products
Google’s AdWords is getting a makeover. The search giant announced today that they have made several updates to make its advertising tools more suitable for mobile. With an emphasis on location-related mobile searches, a category that Google says is growing 50 percent faster than other searches, the company is introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. If a… Read More
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Bloomz raises $2.3 million to connect teachers and students’ families
Education tech startup Bloomz has raised $2.3 million in seed funding for an app that connects teachers and parents, securely. The company’s app features tools that help teachers push updates about students or share photos of them from the classroom back to parents throughout the day. The app also gives educators tools to help coordinate parent-teacher conferences, classroom volunteers… Read More
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Non-profit RideAustin looks to fill void left by Uber and Lyft
Charity or opportunism? It’s so hard to tell, sometimes. In RideAustin’s case, it looks to be a bit of both. It’s a non-profit car-for-hire service that’s happy to abide by the city’s rules — and adds a layer of budget- and conscience-friendly features that may help it stay differentiated (and alive). Read More
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Google and Oracle present closing arguments in battle over Java
Attorneys for Oracle and Google presented their closing arguments today in a lawsuit over Google’s use of Java APIs owned by Oracle in Android. Oracle accused Google of stealing a collection of APIs, while Google suggested that Android transformed the smartphone market and Oracle sued out of desperation when its own smartphone attempts failed to launch. The case is expected to have… Read More
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Tim Cook admits ‘prices are high’ for iPhones in India
Apple CEO Tim Cook made an uncharacteristic admission today in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV — that iPhones are too expensive. He immediately qualified it, and the context really is important, but it’s just one of those things you don’t hear very often. Read More
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Facebook enables Continuous Live Video to power puppycams and more
Live mobile video is evolving beyond selfie-stream rants and citizen journalism. Facebook will now allow non-stop, long-form broadcasting as long as the creators don’t mind that they won’t be able to permanently save and share the video. The new Continuous Live Video API enables persistent streams like nature feeds, 24-hour windows into major landmarks or cameras trained on a pit… Read More
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Facebook Live lets you skip to the good part
Facebook’s newest feature could fundamentally change how you watch video. Until now, you either sat through a video until it got too boring, waited for the interesting part or fast-forwarded hoping to spy something worth seeing. But for clips that weren’t immediately exciting, especially monologues or selfie-streams where the action was in the audio, it was tough to tell if a… Read More
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Instagram’s code hints at option to pay to boost posts
We’ve known for some time that Instagram will soon be introducing business profiles, analytics and features intended to improve the ad-buying experience on the Facebook-owned photo-sharing network. Now, a number of other undocumented, non-public features have been uncovered, following a decompiling of the latest Instagram application, including one that hints that Instagram plans to offer… Read More
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The crazy dream of modular smartphones
File it under ‘it seemed great on paper’… but Google’s project Ara modular smartphone concept is — for all intents and purposes — dead. If you want to be a little more generous, you can say Google has pivoted away from attempting to engineer the impossible — i.e. total smartphone modularity — to strip it back to a few swappable units that will… Read More
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New subscription service Circle Go lets parents manage kids’ devices outside the home
The company behind a device that helps parents enforce their home’s internet rules and restrictions, Circle with Disney, launched last winter in partnership with Disney for its included media content, will now allow parents to manage children’s devices outside the home. The company announced this morning the launch of a subscription-based companion service called Circle Go… Read More
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