Category: Tech news

 You know those basketball trick shot videos that were all the rage not long ago? The ones where a flock o’ fauxhawks make 47,000 attempts at some ridiculously complex basketball shot, then upload the one where it actually works and everyone goes nuts?
This is like that, but with science. And by science, I mean 100% fictional Portal guns. Read More

 Food startup Farmigo is a San Francisco transplant — like me.
The company was initially based on the West Coast, and it still has team members there (as well as in Tel Aviv, Israel). But two years ago, Farmigo’s headquarters, as well as its founder and CEO Benzi Ronen, moved across the country to Brooklyn, giving us an unusual perspective for the latest episode of Built in Brooklyn. Read More

 Everplans, the online service that helps people plan for the only certainty in life besides taxes, has raised new cash to bring to market a product for financial advisers and service providers in the new year.
“We launched the product to consumers and we started to get calls from financial advisers, and insurers,” says Everplans co-founder and chief executive Abby Schneiderman. Read More

 It’s the holiday season, and in the spirit of giving, the Crunchies Monkey made a visit to the TechCrunch office during our annual holiday party. He celebrated the year by exchanging gifts with a few of our TechCrunch staffers, handing out invitations to the 8th Annual Crunchies Awards Ceremony in the process. Read More

 Twitter has once again expanded access to its analytics data, today introducing the ability to view your “tweet activity” on mobile. In the latest version of Twitter’s iOS application, a new feature allows users to tap on a “View Analytics Details” option from any tweet’s detail page in order to see data related to that post, including total impressions… Read More

 Twitter had a strong day in the market, spiking more than 4 percent in midday trading before ending the day up a slightly more modest 3.67 percent. The company’s shares benefited from a positive ‘buy’ rating from Argus that included a $44 per-share price target. The company’s shares closed the day at $38.44 per share. More dramatically, SunTrust’s Bob Peck,… Read More

 Sales startup Datanyze is announcing its first acquisition — it’s buying a similar service, LeadLedger.
On a broad level, Datanyze and LeadLedger basically promise customers the same thing — they’re trying to help salespeople find new leads, particularly by tracking which websites are using competitors’ products, as well as overall market share. Read More

 It’s the final week of the Christmas season, and the holiday shopping advertisements are flowing through my inbox faster than startup pitches. While endorsements from celebrities occasionally show up, there is one uber-influencer that seems to appear more than any other. Jolly St. Nick, the rotund and red-clothed Santa character partially popularized by Coca-Cola, has traditionally been… Read More

 Aviate, the mobile homescreen application Yahoo acquired at the beginning of the year, has today received a notable update that will allow Android smartphone owners to search for contacts or apps installed on their device, or search across the web, all from a single interface. The web search is powered by Yahoo, the company notes – which means that Aviate users will be connected to… Read More

 Google provides the world with bi-yearly, year-ago looks into which countries’ governments requested data on its users, in what quantity, and how many content takedown demands it received from the same entities. Read More

 Everyone has someone on their list that is impossible to shop for. They have everything. In those times, it’s probably safe to give a nice bottle of whiskey. Or any of the items on the following list. There is no way they have everything listed below, but in case they do, default to the whiskey. That’s truly a gift that keeps on giving anyway. DJI Phantom 2 Vision + The DJI Phantom… Read More

 Finding a good app can be like looking for a needle in a truck stop bathroom. Apple and Google aren’t doing much to help you sift through their messy app stores. Facebook has tried to step up, but sometimes you don’t care about your friends and just want a new mobile toy to play with. So Facebook is taking haters’ worst nightmares and turning them into an app discovery tool. Read More

 Wearable tech has seemed on a fairly straightforward path throughout the course of its initial development – from the step counter, to the fitness band, to the smartwatch. But the wrist has long been a home for a more refined and storied piece of tech: The wristwatch. And while smartwatches attempt to reimagine that gadget for a modern age, only the new Withings Activité tracker nails… Read More

 Google has been working on self-driving cars for a few years now — but up until recently, they were mostly modifying the heck out of existing cars, not building a vehicle from the ground up.
Back in May, they released a mockup of what they expected their first built-in-house vehicle to look like. Today, they’ve released a photo of the real deal. Read More

 Apple has expanded its social media marketing efforts to include Tumblr once again, with the launch of a new iTunes Tumblr site which is currently promoting the “best of 2014″ in music, movies, TV and books. The blog features “best of” videos for each category, combined with shareable GIFs, images, quotes and other content ideal for reblogging. Read More