Jonny IV Wants To Be Nasty Gal For Men

Screenshot 2014-10-23 13.16.34 Today marks the launch of yet another ecommerce brand focused on mens apparel, as Jonny IV joins ranks with Buck Mason, Frank & Oak, and many others. Founded by Eugene Kang, the former head of ecommerce at Forever 21, Jonny IV is different from other brands in that it focuses on street wear as opposed to a single, look, like the preppy Frank & Oak, basics-focused Everlane, or the… Read More

Twilio Project Turns 2048 Into A Multiplayer Game That You Play By Text

twilio plays Remember all of the wonderfully-entertaining frustration that was Twitch Plays Pokemon?
Take that concept and turn it on its head. Wrap it around a puzzle game instead of a side-scroller, and have players text in commands rather than input them via chat.
The end result: TwilioPlays2048. Read More

Q&A With Facebook’s Josh Miller On Why His Rooms App Isn’t Anonymous, It’s The Early Web Reborn

Josh Miller Is Rooms the anonymous Facebook app people were expecting? “No. Unequivocally No…because you cannot be anonymous in our app,” Josh Miller tells me. The Branch founder turned Facebook product manager’s new forums app Rooms launches today, and he says lessons from Tumblr, Twitter, Snapchat, and the early days of the web guided its construction. Rather than a… Read More

Facebook Launches Pseudonymous App “Rooms” That Lets You Create Forums About Any Topic

Facebook Rooms It’s not quite anonymous, but forums standalone app Rooms is Facebook’s first product that allows you to ditch your real name. Rooms lets you set up a mobile-only in-app discussion space about any topic, customize the look and moderation settings, set a screen name for the room, and choose who to invite to share text, photos, videos, and comments with others in the Room. It’s… Read More

Hardware Battlefield Applications Close In A Week

robot-2015 Stop procrastinating and fill out your application for Hardware Battlefield. The show is set to be even better than last year with participating startups getting free exhibition space at the 2015 International CES and competing for $50,000 and the coveted Metal Man trophy. For the first time, TechCrunch has partnered with the CEA to be an official media partner of the tradeshow. This… Read More

Mint’s Aaron Patzer Launches Beta Version Of An On-Demand Answers App With $4 Million In Funding From Shasta And First Round

Context 01 - Fountain in Aaron's SF back yard Aaron Patzer, the founder and former CEO of Mint is placing his next bet with the on-demand info space. He and co-founder Jean Sini (another former Minter) are launching the beta of Fountain, an app that gives you advice from a curated set of experts. The app is currently focusing on the home improvement space and in alpha testing phase with a bunch of friends and family, but Patzer tells us… Read More

Android Wear Update Adds Offline Music, Bluetooth Headphone And GPS Support

batman-dance Android Wear is getting its first big update, with features that make smartwatches using Google’s wearable operating system more standalone devices, including music syncing and GPS location support. That means if you leave your watch at home while you go out for a jog, you’ve still got access to sweet jams, and your watch can still tell you where you are, and how to get home. The… Read More

And The TechCrunch Disrupt Europe Finalists Are Crate, Disease Diagnostic Group, Oscult And PhotoMath

disrupt-0083 Over 1,500 people have walked through door at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Europe conference in London. We had everyone from Elvis impersonators to people dressed up as chickens participate, as one does at a tech conference.
Highlights included watching our boss Tim Armstrong chat with Josh Constine about the high growth future of Aol, and what he learned after the mistake of firing… Read More

Apple CEO Tim Cook Addresses The iPad’s Continued Lack Of Sales Growth

ipad-air-2-3 During today’s earnings call for Apple’s fiscal Q4 2014, CEO Tim Cook took time to address the iPad’s performance at length. Cook referred to a lot of the general kinds of negative feeling around iPad performance circulating around media and analysts, and brought up his own perspective on the product category. “I take a step back on iPad,” he said. “I know… Read More

In Oakland, A Sign of Some Very High Times

oaksterdam-gift-shop How bad is the commercial real estate crunch in San Francisco and Silicon Valley?
Uh, bad?
So bad that that prices per square foot are roughly where they were around the first dot-com boom.
So bad that Uber decided to go in, buy its own piece of land and build its own headquarters from scratch.
So bad that Doug Shorenstein, part of the storied multi-generational family of San Francisco… Read More

App Store Downloads Top 85 Billion, Revenue Up 36 Percent Year-Over-Year

app-store Apple CEO Tim Cook announced today during the company’s FY Q4 2014 earnings call that Apple’s cumulative App Store downloads have now topped 85 billion up from 60 billion around a year ago. The number was announced alongside news of Apple’s massive quarter, and its record-breaking sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. For additional context, at Apple’s… Read More

Apple’s Huge Q4: $42.1 Billion In Revenue, $8.5 Billion In Profit

apple-earnings-green Today after the bell, Apple reported its fiscal fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $42.1 billion, and earnings per share of $1.42. Analysts had expected Apple to report profit of $1.31 per share, on revenue for the period of $39.85 billion. During the fiscal quarter, Apple had net profit of $8.5 billion, up 13.3% from $7.5 Billion in the same quarter last year. Compared… Read More