Category: Tech news

Despite the popularity of travel booking sites like Kayak, TripAdvisor, and Expedia, venture capital firms are still investing in companies selling consumers a better way to travel.  In the past few years, investors have poured millions into travel and accommodation companies around the globe like Airbnb and Room 77, Wimdu (Berlin), Tuniu and 17u.cn (Beijing and Suzhou, China), Ostrovok… Read More

This week on the TechCrunch Droidcast, I’m joined by Chris Velazco as he shares his recent MWC memories. We also dig into Samsung’s new Milk Music streaming radio service, and the Pebble 2.0 software for Android, as well as HTC’s upcoming One flagship smartphone announcement. It’s a crazy, crazy time in Android land, if only because it’s new phone season, since spring… Read More

Neither of the games industry’s new flagship boxes — the PS4 and the Xbox One — is selling well compared to previous generations of flagship home consoles. The console market as a whole appears to be shrinking significantly — and that’s having a knock-on impact on games studios and game development. Read More

Google could face a penalty of up to $5 billion if found guilty by the Competition Commission of India in a two-year old probe launched to investigate if the company abused its dominant position in the business of Internet search and advertising. India started antitrust investigation against Google in 2012 based on complaints from the advocacy group, CUTS International, and a local matrimony… Read More

In 2013, eBay announced a big focus on growth in emerging markets for its marketplace, in particular, Russia, Brazil and China. Some of this growth can be enabled through localization, but the marketplace has tested a more technical approach — with machine translation — with its first big expansion effort in Russia. Read More

Greetings from a rainy (but always fun) Austin, TX. As is the case leading up to every SXSW, many wonder what will be the breakout app. As someone who works in, invests in, and writes about mobile, the app that’s come up the most in conversation, offline and online, is no “secret.” It’s not too surprising given Secret launched publicly at the right time (a little over a month ago),… Read More

The Gillmor Gang – Doc Searls, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — talk the usual smack about the complete fantasy known as IM interoperability. You’d think these stalwarts would acknowledge the Sisyphean nature of the task, but no siree Bob. Instead we have a real life get together brought to you in 6-frame stop animation courtesy Kevin Marks’ LTE. Doc Searls and Keith Teare have… Read More

A couple of months ago, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone launched an app called Jelly, meant to make asking and answering random questions more fun. So, in a world where we wear out Google with inquiry after inquiry, is there really a place in the world for a Q&A app?

This is the question we pose on this week’s episode of Fly Or Die. Welcome. Read More

The bright minds at Stanford who created Omlet have a different idea about how communicating — and more importantly, the data that goes along with communication — should be handled these days. Read More

The buzzy new app Secret — which lets people post messages to their circles of contacts without attribution — has closed a $10 million round of funding at a $50 million post-money valuation, TechCrunch has learned from two sources close to the situation. The funding was led by Google Ventures, with participation also from KPCB. Read More

Today at SXSW, two of Oculus’ cofounders took the stage for a Q&A on the future of their burgeoning virtual reality headset.

While they dodged the question that most watching wanted answered, they did dive into what many have asked since the Rift started picking up steam: why now? Plenty have tried this VR thing before, and it’s never taken off. Why might the Rift do any better? Read More

Editor’s Note: This excerpt is authored by Nir Eyal and appears in Michal Levin’s new book, Designing Multi-Device Experiences. Nir Eyal is also the author of Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit Forming Products and blogs at NirAndFar.com.  Allow me to take liberties with a philosophical question reworked for our digital age. If an app fails in the App Store and no one is around… Read More

When we last left Baggg.it, the founders Eliyah Finkelstein, Jonathan Cook, and Michael Cook were busy building a shopping extension, a Baggg if you will, that allowed you to comparison shop between sites and products. They were close to completion but they soon realized that sites with three Gs in the name had gone out with the BeeGeeGeeGees. Read More

Famed scientist and science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the importance of space exploration today during his keynote at South by Southwest Interactive. Despite advances by private companies, particularly SpaceX, he said they won’t be the ones making the biggest breakthroughs. Tyson admitted that for him, the appeal of space travel is the simple fact that it’s “a frontier.”… Read More

Wearables are being used by users to measure their activity and provide them with feedback that can help them improve their health. Today, a new startup called Lightwave is using wearable technology to provide analytics around live events for performers and artists. Read More