Category: Tech news

 A couple of days ago, an acquaintance on Twitter pointed out the website for Selfies, a new social app from Automattic, best known as the company behind WordPress. I found it odd that the app was out in the wild and hadn’t received any press coverage, but according to the site’s FAQ, that was the point: to see what would happen if they just put it out there. Read More

 There are lots of things that review sites should rank hotels on, but don’t. Is it known for bed bugs? Is the “heated pool” only heated during summer when the sun is out? How many ghosts live there? How fast is the WiFi?
This site won’t help you with all of those, but it will help you with that last one. Read More

 Amazon’s Fire Phone is out today, and while it’s got some interesting features that set it apart from your run-of-the-mill Android phone, it doesn’t seem like it will appeal to those who aren’t voracious online shoppers. Now Amazon is releasing games exclusive to its devices in order to draw in the lucrative gamer audience. Read More

 Do you have a Tesla? Do you also have an Android Wear smartwatch? Do you wish they worked better together?
Don’t worry! Solving the #1 problem of Batmans everywhere, these guys have figured out how to let you control a Tesla Model S through a smartwatch. Read More

 Let’s face it: We’re right smack in the middle of summer, at the time of year when tech news slows to a crawl. But that didn’t stop us from filming a wildly entertaining episode of CrunchWeek, because when the tech news gods give us lemons, we make lemonade. Read More

 Over the years, Google Translate has gotten significantly better at giving its users (relatively) legible translations for most commonly used languages. It’s still far off from being perfect, though, and today Google announced a new initiative that aims to get more input from its users to improve its translations. The Google Translate Community, which is now open for everybody, gives… Read More

 Facebook’s News Feed has decided that I like gruesome murders. Actually, senseless deaths and gruesome murders. I’m not exactly sure when the problem started, but I imagine it was around the time of one of the now too-common stories of mass shootings like Sandy Hook. Or at least, that’s what I like to tell myself – that surely, I was following a nationwide news story… Read More

 MIT PhD Lyssa Neel is using socializing and accessorizing to get get girls interested in programming. Neel’s invention, Linkitz, is a wearable electronic toy that allows kids to rearrange, take apart and snap together electronic blocks that blink and buzz to change their behavior. This teaches them programming in a fun way, says Neel. Both boys and girls can play with Linkitz, but… Read More

 A parent company isn’t all that different from a real parent. They feed you, and give you money. They give you advice (sometimes more strictly than others). And, yes, they embarrass you. Speaking of, today our proud parent company Aol, with vast experience in the retail, online retail, online business, has launched an online storefront for its brands, including TechCrunch. Welcome,… Read More

 Unlocking a smart phone to run on a different carrier. It seems completely innocuous, right? Something you’d do with a bit of time on your weekend just to see if you could.
Surprise! It’s illegal. And we’re not talking jay-walking-when-no-one-is-looking illegal, either —thanks to some crazy ass interpretations of the DMCA, it’s punishable by up to 5 years in… Read More

 As the summer presses onward, so do we. A massive Apple patent surfaced this week, giving us our most detailed look yet at the company’s focus for the much-rumored iWatch. And speaking of Apple, the company recently released an interesting commercial showing off MacBook Air notebooks covered in stickers. Plus, we discovered a fun Indiegogo campaign this week for the Defender, a… Read More

 When Homejoy raised its $38 million round of funding last December, the company did so with a plan to move beyond just offering cleaning services to its customers. It’s starting to make good on that plan, with the launch of a beta test for other home services. In an email sent out to some Homejoy users (text below), the company invites customers to book and try out some of the new… Read More

 At its I/O developer conference earlier this month, Google announced a major update to its suite of productivity apps, including Docs, Sheets and Slides. The main feature there was the integration of QuickOffice, which now makes editing native Microsoft Office documents online easier. Today, Google recapped some of those updates in a blog post, but it also threw in a new Google Docs feature… Read More

 Bose has sued soon-to-be-Apple-owned Beats over patents it holds related to noise-cancelling headphones, according to a new report from CNBC. The new suit means that Apple has a brand new patent battleground, should the Beats acquisition go through as planned, in addition to its ongoing litigation with Samsung and others. The full complaint is listed on Priorsmart, and lists Beat Electronics… Read More

Greats Brand, aspiring to be the Warby Parker of mens’ footwear, has revealed that the company broke $100,000 in sales in June, with a projected $1.6 million run rate for the year. Following a $1.5 million financing round, the shoe brand will, for the first time, have three different models of their shoes available at once. Historically, the brand has sold only one or two versions of a… Read More