Category: Tech news

 There is a constant tension about education in labor economics these days. On one hand, education is strongly correlated with income as well as employability. Workers with college degrees, or even just some university-level courses, are significantly more likely to have a job and to be paid better, as well. This is borne out by today’s U.S. jobs report, which showed a decrease of… Read More

 At its WWDC keynote earlier this week, Apple announced CloudKit, a new, “effectively free” developer framework that lets app creators tap into Apple’s iCloud so that they can more easily work cloud components into their mobile apps. Read More

 This week, Tinder yet again took online dating to a new level. After gamifying the experience of flirting in a bar, and putting it in your pocket, the app has now turned into a pseudo-social network that lets you send photos to all your matches as a single blast, upping the chances for a connection. But as we look forward, it’s worth taking a look at the history of this breakaway success. Read More

 There are plenty of things to take for granted in this life, and the ability to hear is one that most of the population does. But not the team at MotionSavvy. Motion Savvy, which emerged from the Leap Motion accelerator AXLR8R, is building a tablet case that leverages the power of Leap Motion in order to translate American Sign Language into English and vice versa. The entire 30-person team… Read More

 There are plenty of reviews available for those of you looking for advice on whether or not the new military sci-fi flick “Edge of Tomorrow” is worth seeing in theaters. This is not one of those reviews. My purpose in screening the film—and in getting an inside perspective from the film’s director, Doug Liman—was to peer into the depths of the fictional reality… Read More

 “Google Play Music All-Access”. That tongue-twisting name says a lot about how well Google understands humans. It’s also why the New York Post’s report that Google is in talks to buy contextual playlist service Songza for $15 million seems like a smart move. While Google Music has playlists, they’re generic, static, and totally unorganized. Songza lets you say… Read More

 At its WWDC conference this week, Apple unveiled a scaffolding of sorts that allows developers to control smart home devices like light switches, thermostats, garage doors and more. This is called HomeKit, and it promises to be flexible and powerful — but its success will lie in hardware adoption. Read More

 We’re using apps on our smartphones and tablets much more to look things up now, according to a new report out from eMarketer. That means a serious drop in ad revenue for many of the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. According to eMarketer, Google mobile ads saw a dramatic 17 percent drop in revenue from 2012. The search giant owned 82.8 percent of the $2.24 billion search… Read More

 Ah, summertime. It’s all about lazy days, lemonade, barbecues, and technology companies raising massive new funding rounds at record-breaking valuations. At least one of those things proved good fodder for this week’s episode of CrunchWeek. In the video embedded above, watch Leena Rao, Kyle Russell and I gather around the big roundtable to talk about Uber’s new $1.2… Read More

 TrendKite, a startup promising to help brands and agencies measure the effectiveness of their PR efforts, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding. It’s also announcing that it has a new CEO — Eric Huddleston, former CTO and executive vice president of product at social monitoring company Dachis Group. Huddleston told me that when Dachis Group was acquired by Sprinklr in… Read More

 Happy Friday, friends. In case you missed out on being able to attend Google’s I/O 2014 developer conference taking place on June 25-26 at Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, don’t fret. We have 15 registration codes to give away to 15 lucky winners (each valued at $900). Read More

 Sticker packs and emoji have become a go-to means for mobile messaging companies to generate revenue from what are otherwise free applications. Today, one such service, a former TechCrunch Disrupt battlefield finalist called Talkz, is introducing a new way to upgrade the sticker experience in a way that leverages the speech background of Talkz founder and CEO Heath Ahrens, also… Read More

 WWDC! Apple might have skimped on hardware announcements, but the improvements to Apple’s desktop and mobile software are plenty. iOS 8 offers badass messaging, new camera software, and of course, Continuity, which lets you leave one task and pick it up from device to device. Meanwhile, OS X Yosemite offers a “dark mode”!! But at the end of the day, it’s the developers… Read More

 Spotsetter, a social search engine using big data to offer personalized recommendations as to places to go, has been quietly snapped up by Apple, TechCrunch has learned. The technology, which involves layering social data on top of a maps interface could be used to beef up Apple Maps with features competitor Google lacks. The deal, we understand, was mainly about acquiring the technology and… Read More

It may not be an ideal primary phone, but if you want a beater phone to take adventuring, or need something to fill in for a broken device until you reach the end of your contract, the Moto E is a great option.