-
Netflix becomes the Top Grossing iPhone app for the first time
Netflix’s decision to introduce an in-app subscription option in its iOS app over a year ago has helped the streaming service steadily gain more subscribers, and surge up the Top Grossing charts in the Apple App Store. Back in November of last year, the app hit the Top Grossing chart for the first time, reaching the No. 9 position. Today, Netflix has reached another milestone, as the… Read More
-
Open As App turns boring business data into a mobile app instantly
Cloud computing has made collaboration across coworkers easier than ever, but that doesn’t mean that workers are as productive as possible when they’re on the go. Open As App aims to change all that. Launching today in the Startup Battlefield at TC Disrupt London, Open As App offers a platform that lets businesses instantly create apps from their data. Businesses can simply… Read More
-
StrongDM raises $3M to keep database info from leaking out
When companies are looking to secure the information they have in their databases, it’s a pretty big challenge no matter how you slice it. Unless you have a large security budget that can manage permissions and figure out who is doing what, you are probably cobbling together whatever technology you can from open source locations, strongDM CEO Elizabeth Zalman says. So there needs to be a… Read More
-
Infltr lets you filter your photos directly in the iMessage app
Photo-editing app Infltr is best known for giving Instagram a run for its money with an app that lets you choose from an infinite number of photo filters – well, technically, it’s just over 7 million. The idea is that you can use color combinations to give your photo a unique look, instead of relying on built-in filter presets. Now, Infltr is bringing its photo editor to the… Read More
-
Digital chief-of-staff app Accompany raises $20M and launches a UK Beta
Accompany, an app that Amy Chang bets will be able to replace the chief-of-staff or personal assistant of an executive, launched just a few months ago. The app had been in the works for a while, and now that it’s finally out the door, it’s time to step on the gas — so it’s launching in the U.K. in a beta. Chang’s bet is that there’s a slot for an app that… Read More
-
Seeds helps developers make more money through in-app social good purchases
Seeds unveiled its drag-and-drop SDK for developers to integrate social good contributions directly into their apps today at TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016. Seeds also announced a partnership with Amazon app store, in which Amazon markets Seeds directly to its roughly 600,000 app developers. The idea is that people are incentivized to spend money inside an app if they know it’s going to… Read More
-
Google’s new Trusted Contacts app lets you share your location in emergencies
With Trusted Contacts, Google is launching a new personal safety app for Android today that allows others to ping you for your location when they think you may have been in an accident or in danger. The idea here is that you define who these trusted contacts are and by doing so, you allow them to see where you are when they ping you. The twist here is that you can always decline to share… Read More
-
Find free stopover vacations with AirWander flight search
Flying to London? You could spend three days in Amsterdam on the way for free or cheap. That’s the promise of AirWander, a new flight search engine for the adventurous. AirWander finds you inexpensive stopovers — essentially multi-day layovers when you can explore a connecting city between other flights. It can also help you plan multi-city excursions, stringing several flights… Read More
-
CENTURY dives deep to track student performance and help teachers build custom curriculum
When Priya Lakhani went to pick up her daughter from school one day, she asked her teacher how her daughter was doing. It was when she was walking home with her daughter that same day that she realized she wouldn’t always be able to have those types of opportunities to engage with teachers. That prompted her to start a company called CENTURY, a tool that gives students a tailored… Read More
-
Mischief managed: 5 hackathon hacks for Potter fans inspired by the Marauder’s Map
Great news, Potter fans: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is no longer the only place in the world where you can find a working Marauder’s Map, the magical piece of parchment that let Harry Potter and others track the movements of people as they went around the Hogwarts campus and its many public and secret passageways. This weekend at the TechCrunch Disrupt… Read More
-
My Bricks Online puts your smartphone in Lego to make playtime fun again
Lego! Lego! Lego! Who doesn’t like Lego? One of the most fascinating entries to the hackthon at TechCrunch Disrupt London used the beloved little bricks to help take young eyes away from screens and electronics devices. Read More
-
Disrupt Hackathon app Notim.press/ed algorithmically detects fake news
Fake news is a moving target. Greedy publishers constantly start new websites of deceit, preventing manual blacklists from keeping up. That’s why one TechCrunch Disrupt London Hackathon team took an algorithmic approach to detecting fake news. Notim.press/ed (a clever URL that reads “Not Impressed”) lets you enter a URL and instantly see a site’s Alexa top websites… Read More
-
Amplify lets you play synchronized songs across every phone in the room
Say you’re at a party, and someone wants to get a silent disco going. Everyone opens their phone, someone yells “play,” and hopefully everyone gets it started at the same time. Well, that works, but it could be better. So at the TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016 Hackathon, a few developers in the United Kingdom built an app to make sure everyone’s at the same part in the song. Read More
-
Beddit 3 knows if you’ve been sleeping. It knows if you’re awake.
Jolted into existence with a $500,000 Indiegogo campaign back in 2013, followed by a version 2 that was sold in Apple Stores all over the world, Beddit is back with a third generation of its popular addition to the Quantified Self movement: sleep tracking. The product went on sale in September and immediately sold out, and the company is still selling Beddit 3 faster than it can make them. Read More
-
Emotibot wants to help chatbots know how you really feel
Emotional intelligence is a hard thing to achieve, even in humans. But it’s especially difficult in robots, and maybe even more so in chatbots, whose available tools for picking up on emotional cues are quite limited. Emotibot is a Chinese startup focused on making sure personal assistants, chatbots and virtual customer service agents can accurately understand the emotional state of… Read More
-
WeChat, China’s top messaging app, no longer tells users when it censors their messages
Users of WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app, are having conversations secretly censored without their knowledge, according to a new report from Citizen Lab. Read More
-
Reports of a Facebook fake news detector are apparently a plugin
Update: The feature appears to be an implementation of the Chrome plugin B.S. Detector, which some users took as a test by Facebook itself. We’ll continue to investigate but for now it looks like this is not a Facebook feature. Yes, the irony is rich. Facebook is showing red warning labels above fake news links in the News Feed for some users in what appears to be a limited test. Read More
-
Earthquake-sensing mobile app MyShake captures hundreds of temblors large and small
Back in February, seismologists at UC Berkeley released MyShake, an app that passively monitors for seismic activity, both watching for earthquakes and warning users if one is underway. In the months since its introduction, the app has outperformed its creators’ expectations, detecting over 200 earthquakes in more than ten countries. Read More
-
That one time I was tucked in by a startup
There I was on a comfy gray couch, surrounded by pillows and being handed an eye mask in a reserved office space in downtown San Francisco when, next thing I knew, Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm was tucking me in and spraying a relaxing mist over my body. “Sweet dreams,” said his comms person as the two shut the door. That’s when Tamara began to speak… Tamara… Read More
Message Us