Category: Tech news

 A song lyric from “All That Jazz” comes to mind following Apple’s big announcement about mobile payments on Tuesday: “Everything old is new again.” Amid rumors and leaks surrounding the new Apple phone, operating system and peripherals, Apple clearly saw – and took advantage of – the looming perfect storm in mobile payments that’s been swirling… Read More

 You can call it a Virtual Personal Assistant, an Intelligent Agent, an Intelligent Interface or whatever you wish. We call it inevitable. The era of the assistant that began with Siri will eventually dominate the way people interact with mobile devices, computers, cars, wearables, appliances and every other piece of technology that requires complex human-machine interaction. We do not appear… Read More

 Product Hunt, the aggregation site that many people consider a direct competitor to TechCrunch and other tech blogs due to its ability to surface new tech products and startups, has raised a hefty series A, we’re hearing. We’ve heard that Andreessen Horowitz led the round, and that Product Hunt picked up $6 million at a $22 million valuation (our tipsters were unclear on whether… Read More

 On Tuesday we launched our SiriusXM radio show, TechCrunch Radio, from Disrupt SF. Jordan Crook and John Biggs discussed the Apple Watch and did a startup pitch-off. Here are a few audio clips. Catch next week’s show on the Indie 103 channel, airing Tuesday September 16 at 6 p.m. ET. The show also replays Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET, Fridays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9 p.m. ET. Read More

 Buying a game company is like buying an aging baseball player. You’ll need a miracle to get another hit. And while they might have plenty of fans, they probably aren’t making a lot of new ones. Mojang hit a grand slam home run with Minecraft, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft should pay $2.5 billion for it, as it’s reportedly going to announce this week. There’s… Read More

 Considering how important proprietary deal flow has become as a tool for differentiation within venture capital, it’s surprising that more VCs aren’t shopping in the South. They simply aren’t looking at the concepts and companies coming out of Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, and other Southern startup hubs. At best, VCs might have a token startup on their roster… Read More

 We’re on the verge of a linguistic revolution, made possible by the fact that Apple has opened up its iOS operating system to allow third-party keyboards. One of the first entrants will be PopKey, a project out of the WorkshopX creative studio based in Ottawa, which has created on-demand social photo printing service CanvasPop, among others. The Betaworks-style operation’s new… Read More

 If you think boating sounds vaguely appealing but you’ve never actually made it out on the water, a New York City startup called Sailo aims to help. It’s not the first company to allow you to rent boats from their owners. Early last year, for example, we wrote about Boatbound, a self-described Airbnb for boats. However, Boatbound and similar services are really focused on getting… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, Benedict Evans, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. It’s three days later and I’m still going back and forth over which iPhone to buy. The preorders are sold out for 6+, tipping the scale toward the smaller bigger one. What may tip it back is the Watch, which suggests a new paradigm of interlinked devices that, when starting with… Read More

 Colorado has a history with gun violence so it’s only appropriate that 17-year-old Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder, would want to apply biometric user authentication to firearms. Kloepfer just won the $50,000 Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge for his smart gun prototype. Angel investor and gun reform advocate Ron Conway became the main backer of the $1 million Smart… Read More

 Early last year, I wrote an article explaining how our team views the concept of duty for leaders in the technology ecosystem. We believe that this duty involves looking beyond conventional startups to study complex industries and using technology to tackle the biggest problems we can find. Read More

 It’s been an exciting week for us here at TechCrunch with the Hackathon, Disrupt SF and Apple’s product launch all taking place within a few days. Here are 11 of our best stories from the past week (9/6-9/12). 1. Apple had a number of new product releases this week. We introduced you to the Apple Watch, the company’s highly anticipated first foray into the world of… Read More

 Of all industry roller coasters, the music industry must be the wildest. The last 30 years reshaped the business in a way we never could have imagined. Music as a product changed dramatically (e.g. from LPs to MP3s) and the ups-and-downs in worldwide sales would make the most hardened theme park visitor queasy. Nonetheless, we have yet to experience the biggest switchback on this… Read More

 The worst tech news I read last week was: “Twitter CFO says a Facebook-style filtered feed is coming, whether you like it or not.” The horrified firestorm of condemnation that erupted in response was the first time I’ve ever seen anything like unanimity on my Twitter feed. Fortunately, it seems it’s not actually happening. (At least not any time soon.) Read More

 In the vast panoply of potential home networking protocols, there are only a few worth worrying about. Wi-Fi works well but it can go down and ZigBee and the like are sparsely supported. But Bluetooth Smart is local, secure, and easy to use. And that’s what Seed Labs is using to connect our lamps, our blinds, and even our tea kettles. This Polish startup has built a small chip –… Read More