Category: Tech news

 I really need to learn how to bet. Today in a blog post, Microsoft’s Brian Hall promised that Microsoft will get more Surface Pro 3 inventory to the parts of the world where supply of the device is hard to find. The company noted Germany, China, Australia, and Korea as places where it might be difficult to snag one of the devices. What is going on? Microsoft didn’t ship enough of… Read More

 Meeting with VCs can be stressful and we took that to the extreme with our new show. One Lap with Rob Coneybeer takes willing entrepreneurs onto the racetrack and out of their comfort zones. Read More

 Earlier this year, I wrote about ArtCorgi, a startup that makes it easy to commission custom artwork. Now the company is launching a new site called ArtCling, which takes a different approach to actually getting that art up on your walls. ArtCorgi co-founders Malcolm (CEO) and Simone (COO) Collins (yes, they’re a couple — Malcolm actually proposed to Simone using commissioned… Read More

 Customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of booking services on the web and on their phones, so companies like Handybook are taking off. It’s for that reason that the on-demand home services startup has decided to hire former Amazon exec Jeff Pedersen as its new CFO. Read More

 Three years ago this week, Sebastian Thrun recorded his Stanford class on Artificial Intelligence, released it online to a staggering 180,000 students, and started a “revolution in higher education.” Soon after, Coursera, Udacity and others promised free access to valuable content, supposedly delivering a disruptive solution that would solve massive student debt and a struggling… Read More

 Digg, Milk, and Revision3 founder Kevin Rose recently left Google Ventures to start a new mobile development house called North, and now we have some details on the firm’s first app, Tiiny, which will launch soon. The basic idea is that Tiiny lets you share thumbnail-sized photos and animated GIFs to a grid of pics on your friends’ phones, and they disappear 24 hours later. Rather… Read More

 6SensorLabs is building an affordable device that will allow them to quickly and easily check foods for allergens. The company is also hoping to build a mobile app that will help its users share the results of their tests with others and educate them about which restaurant items are safe for those with food allergies or food sensitivity. Read More

 Data is more varied and fast-moving than ever, and analyzing it effectively now requires highly sophisticated software and machinery. But where does big data analytics leave the good old-fashioned hunch? What if the data tells a business manager to ‘jump’ but her intuition says ‘stay’? Read More

 This morning, Dropbox released new information detailing government requests for its user data, and information about certain user accounts. The company also called for the passage of the Senate’s version of the USA FREEDOM Act. In the first half of 2014, Dropbox received “268 requests for user information from law enforcement agencies and 0-249 national security requests.” In… Read More

 Facebook needs to know if you just thought an ad was annoying, or if it was actually inappropriate and no one should see it, so it’s now asking people why after they hide ads they see on the service. Ads marked as offensive or inappropriate will be pulled from Facebook’s site and apps, while the individual user will simply see fewer ads like those they mark as annoying. Facebook… Read More

 Samsung has released a series of videos lampooning this week’s Apple announcement, a move that is at once familiar and not unexpected. There are six of them in total, including one on screen size, in a series called “It Doesn’t Take A Genius.” Collect them all. After years of cringey, tone-deaf commercials, the company has finally grown a few claws and even made fun… Read More

 Google today announced that it has acquired Polar, the highly graphical opinion poll service, for an undisclosed sum. Polar’s service includes both a mobile app that allows users to create and participate in polls, as well as services for web publishers (we’ve occasionally run Polar polls here on TechCrunch, for example). The company says it has served over one billion polls over… Read More

 Patent trolls are on the offensive, using weak patents to go after young tech startups with the hopes of securing licensing deals. These trolls bank on the assumption that these young companies will pay without putting up a fight in order to avoid the high cost of a long drawn out litigation. Read More

 Like the Western black rhino, hieroglyphics and video stores, college career fairs may soon be a relic of the past — particularly when it comes to recruiting software engineers. Read More

 Ifbyphone, a maker of voice marketing software, is announcing that it has raised $30 million in additional funding. It’s also revealing one of the main uses for that money — the acquisition of competitor Mongoose Metrics. This doubles Ifbyphone’s funding from $30 million to $60 million. The round comes from new investor NewSpring Capital, as well as previous backers Apex… Read More