Category: Tech news

 One of the big subjects of discussion in the banking industry earlier this year was the publication of the Millennial Disruption Index, stating that millennials view banks as irrelevant and placing traditional retail banking at the highest risk of disruption compared to other B2C industries. Accenture’s Banking 2020 report confirms this and draws a parallel to the challenges the… Read More

 President Barack Obama spoke in favor of net neutrality this week, pushing back against the idea of paid prioritization, which many call Internet “fast lanes.” Following the president’s comments, a number of technology companies joined cultural and privacy groups in praising the American leader. Read More

 In the tech world, we’re used to seeing young entrepreneurs, from Mark Zuckerberg to Evan Spiegel. But not this young. A group of four middle schoolers from Torrance, California, spent their summer vacation building BankIt, a simple game inspired by Flappy Bird. Their parents wanted them to learn what it was like to be part of a startup, from designing and developing an app to… Read More

 How do you feel about letting strangers into your home? Our homes act as a kind of sanctuary from the outside world, a highly personal and exclusive refuge. They should be safe. While it is a commonplace in cultures throughout the world to be gracious hosts to guests, such warmth rarely extends to complete strangers at the door. Read More

 Verizon announced in late July that it would start throttling the 4G data speeds of customers on unlimited data plans who are among the top 5 percent of their users when it comes to consumption of mobile data, and were “connected to cell sites experiencing heavy demand.” The FCC wasn’t too pleased. The commission sent Verizon a letter stating that… Read More

 There’s been quite the brouhaha lately about disruptive innovation. On one side is Harvard Prof. Clay Christensen (author of The Innovator’s Dilemma) and his long-prevailing theory about how disruptive innovation drives incumbents out of the market. On the other side is Jill Lepore and her attack of Christensen’s theory in The New Yorker. It’s an interesting issue:… Read More

 You know what goes great with a sunny summer Friday? A new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to shoot the breeze about the tech industry’s most interesting stories of the moment. Today, Alex Wilhelm, Ryan Lawler, and I gathered around the big white table to talk about the new carpooling offerings from Lyft and Uber (and the PR tactics that… Read More

 Founded in 2006 when Anthony Eskinazi was just 23 years old, ParkatmyHouse seemed ever so slightly crazy at the time. Who would rent out their unused private drive way or church car park over the Internet? It turned out plenty of people would, and long before smartphone apps came along to make the whole process simpler, Eskinazi was plugging away at his vision, making it the UK’s… Read More

 Pinterest today is unveiling a new way users can communicate, collaborate, and share with one another. With the launch of a new messaging feature, users will be able to keep discussions going on Pinterest around their favorite Pins without having to leave the site or apps. Read More

 Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology and business at NirAndFar.com. He is the author of “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”. Recently, I started looking into the explosively popular new game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The game has ranked at or near the top of Apple’s U.S. App Store charts for the most downloaded… Read More

 The GOP is cool, guys, and they want you to know it.
Out today from the Republican party is a petition in support of Uber. The petition is predictably partisan, blaming “liberal government bureaucrats” alongside “taxi unions” for “setting up roadblocks” and “issuing strangling regulations” to the detriment of Uber. Cities, according to the GOP… Read More

 Vogogo isn’t a new company. The payments processor has been around for about 13 years and is currently processing $75 million in payments in the last 10 months from their Calgary headquarters. Now they’ve raised $8.5 million to help bring their expertise in payments and cryptocurrency to the U.S.
Cormark Securities Inc. led the round which included Salman Partners Inc., Clarus… Read More

Dozens rejoice. Read More

 As August sets in and the tech world goes on vacation, it signals the return of the best part of every year: TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. This is the big show, folks. This is the main stage. And luckily, we’ll have a true star of the tech world up on our stage in the form of Path founder Dave Morin.
Dave Morin built Path as a way to fundamentally change the way we do social media. The… Read More

 On July 25 Amazon began shipping its Fire phone, which includes Firefly, software that instantly recognizes products you can directly purchase on Amazon. Hot on the heels of this announcement was the news that Amazon released a beta version of its mobile wallet, Amazon Wallet, which will allow users to save gift cards to their device. For traditional retailers, Amazon has long been the… Read More