Category: Tech news

 Beijing-headquartered PapayaMobile is known best as a social gaming network and the operators of mobile ad network AppFlood, but today, it’s going in a new direction with the release of a mobile calendaring application. The idea with the newly launched Kiwi Calendar is not just to help you organize and track your meetings and activities, but to actually help you fill out your day… Read More

AT&T’s latest mobile hotspot, the MiFi Liberate, offers lighting fast Wi-Fi and prodigious battery life.

Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer would like you to try to understand him but doesn’t care if you don’t. He admits he’s a troll, he revels in it, and his efforts are, according to him, a form of comedy. Like Andy Kaufman with a keyboard, he wants to be subversive, insulting, and irrational. But his mission isn’t just to get a rise out of people. He’s… Read More

 It’s been a torrid few days for bitcoin, the now globally known cryptocurrency. A price rally kicked off that has, over the past week, pushed the value of bitcoin up by around 25 percent.
Trading near the $580 mark, bitcoin is still down around 50 percent from its record, late-2013 highs, but the life that it’s showing could once again bolster consumer interest in the stuff. Read More

 Rap Genius, the startup that wants to “annotate the world,” sees the departure of co-founder Mahbod Moghadam today, owing to Moghadam’s ill-advised annotations on the rambling manifesto of Elliot Rodger. Rodger went on a killing spree this past weekend, injuring 13 and killing seven, including himself. In a blog post detailing the news, co-founder and CEO Tom Lehman… Read More

 Connected devices company Nest, now owned by Google, has been lauded — mostly, it must be said, by the tech press — for turning its attention to the utilitarian devices in your home. The ones no-one loves. The no-frills, (usually) beige plastic devices that squat on the wall or ceiling of your home doing one thing and one thing only, and thus ungraciously limiting possibilities… Read More

Forget everything you thought you knew about the Microsoft Surface tablet, as the latest generation of the Windows-powered Surface Pro is a clear step up from the Microsoft slates of yore. In terms of specs, the 12-inch tablet packs a Core i7 processor, and is thinner, lighter, and more powerful than anything Microsoft has put on the table. The Surface Pro 3 also sports a brand new… Read More

 Samsung has a group of new patent applications it filed recently related to wearable tech (via 9to5Google), and these could describe an initial foray into Android Wear, which Samsung has said it would support in addition to its Tizen-powered Gear devices depict a device with a circular face, much like the one featured in Motorola’s Android Wear-powered Moto360, and can work with a variety… Read More

 Thanks to an unlikely series of events, I, a civil/environmental-engineer-turned-tech-media type, found myself on the set of HBO’s Silicon Valley last fall, serving as a consultant to HBO, which was trying to recreate a TechCrunch Disrupt in a Hollywood (well Culver City) studio.
You probably don’t realize the insane amount of work that goes on before the actors show up in the studio. Read More

 Apple is going to make a big play in the connected smart home space, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The company is planning a platform that would turn its iOS devices, including the iPhone, to control their smart home devices, doing things like controlling lights, security systems and connected appliances. This platform would be built into the iPhone, centralizing… Read More

 I see a lot of phones in my work here at TechCrunch, and I’m genuinely impressed with where the average level of quality is at compared to where it was even just five years ago. I’ve seen Android mature so much in that time that it’s amazing – but for all the work Android OEMs have done in terms of narrowing the gap with the iPhone, which had a considerable lead on… Read More

 With the news today that Korea’s leading messenger KakaoTalk is merging with one of that country’s largest internet portals, Daum Communications, we are witnessing the end of the rise of mobile-focused independent messaging startups that started just five years ago. Only Kik Messenger remains standing independently, although there are a slew of ephemeral messengers like Snapchat… Read More

 If the actions of the UC Santa Barbara shooter last week turned the Internet into a crime scene, then the Web is also where we turn to grieve and try to process something that is truly incomprehensible and horrifying. Since news of the murders broke, #YesAllWomen has remained one of the top trending topics on Twitter. Originally created by Twitter user gildedspine in reaction to the Not All… Read More

 Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, announced today that it has raised $210 million in a new funding round led by DST Global, with returning investors Tiger Global, Naspers, and Iconiq Capital also participating. The announcement comes on the heels of last week’s news that Flipkart will acquire online fashion retailer Myntra in a deal reportedly worth $300 million. The… Read More

 Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly writes a regular column about all things video game for TechCrunch. He is a consultant, game designer and creator of leading game design blog What Games Are. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Let’s talk about game designers. The “game designer” is the powerhouse, the visionary, the one who’s going to change up games. “Game… Read More