The latest from TechCrunch
- Mobile Online Shopping Holds The Real Opportunity In Mobile Payments
- Never Take Your Eyes Off This Hacker Metric
- Kelora Patent Found Obvious: Are Other "Obvious" Software Patents In Danger?
- 10 Reasons To Quit Your Job Right Now!
- The Mysterious Words You Can't Tweet
- Devon Steampunk Tread 1 Watch Looks Like Something An Extraordinary Gentleman Would Wear
- Gillmor Gang: Adventures in Medication
- Backstage at Disrupt, Greylock's John Lilly on Building Apps for Phones vs Tablets
- Selling Software That Kills
- Sweating The Small Stuff: Sotheby's Selling Original Steve Jobs Note About Atari Circuit Improvements
- Apple Responds To DOJ eBook Lawsuit, Calls it "Fundamentally Flawed" and "Absurd"
- TinyTap App Lets Kids Create Customized iPad Books & Games
- Gillmor Gang Live 05.25.12 (TCTV)
- MoPub Launches A "Buy It Now" Private Marketplace For Mobile Advertisers
- Gadget Of The Week: The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0
- SimplyUs Brings Couples Closer, With An App For Organizing Their Lives Together
- Death To The Install! Play Facebook Games Straight From News Feed
- White House Receives Flood Of Innovation Fellow Applications After Its Disrupt Announcement
- PayPal Rolls Out To 15 More National Retailers, Announces Deals With 6 Top POS Software & Terminal Makers
- Facebook Camera Could Backfire and Get All Of FB's Apps Buried In A Folder
| Mobile Online Shopping Holds The Real Opportunity In Mobile Payments | Top |
 Every day there is a new headline about mobile payments focused on using a mobile phone to pay at retail locations. Paypal, Google and other industry giants are racing to provide new in-store mobile payment solutions. Large merchants, such as Wal-mart and Target have contemplated their own mobile payment solutions. The debate about whether NFC will be the preferred technology to enable mobile payments rages. However, despite all this press and efforts by industry giants, there is stunningly little traction to use a mobile device to pay at retail locations. This is largely because the solutions offered by industry giants thus far don't solve a meaningful problem in the daily lives of consumers or merchants. Few things in life are easier for consumers than swiping a credit card at checkout and in-store payment systems are as easy and ubiquitous as dial-tone for merchants. However, There is a massive mobile commerce opportunity that is a severe pain point for both consumers and merchants, but large industry players are failing to meaningfully address it. That opportunity is e-commerce on the mobile device or m-commerce. M-commerce is ramping up, proving that consumers not only like to shop via their mobile device, but also will purchase. However, the numbers also show that there's significant room for improvement in the mobile device purchasing experience – mainly through optimizing the shopping and payment processes for consumers. | |
| Never Take Your Eyes Off This Hacker Metric | Top |
 If you're like me, you've had enough of the Facebook IPO story. For tech entrepreneurs struggling to build stuff, the cacophony of recent press is just more noise. That's why when my friend Andrew Chen posted an insightful analysis of Facebook user data, I was happy to get back to learning from what the company did right instead of debating what its bankers did wrong. Chen calculated Facebook's historical ratio of daily active users (DAU) to monthly active users (MAU) and the stats are startling. Since March 2009, when the earliest data is available, approximately 50% of Facebook users logged in daily. As other technology companies struggle to maintain DAU to MAU ratios of 5% or less, Facebook's numbers appear stratospherically high in comparison. But what is equally surprising is the consistency of that ratio over time. Despite periodic user revolts in reaction to changes in the site, the ratio remained strangely stable. In fact, the number has risen over the past year and is now hovering at 58% as of March of this year. | |
| Kelora Patent Found Obvious: Are Other "Obvious" Software Patents In Danger? | Top |
 As software patent litigation ramped up over the past few years, software patents have come under the microscope within the technical community. Many investors and technologists believe that software patents should be abolished all together, while others take the less extreme position that many software patents are obvious over known prior art ("prior art" being earlier publications that show a patent is obvious or not new). Courts are increasingly cognizant of these criticisms. Though it is unlikely that software patents are going away any time soon, as the recent summary judgment in eBay v PartsRiver (PartsRiver is now known as Kelora) demonstrates, courts are beginning to do a more thorough job of applying the obviousness standard to software patents. | |
| 10 Reasons To Quit Your Job Right Now! | Top |
 The game is over. That game where they get to hire you for 40 years, pay you far less than you create, and then give you a gold watch, and then you get bored, you get depressed, and you die alone. It wasn't that fun of a game anyway. When I had a corporate job I would wake up depressed. I couldn't move out of bed. The sun would be coming in. A cat on the fire escape staring at me through the window. Even it was more excited to be alive than me. And, by the way, I had the best job in the world. I interviewed prostitutes for a living at three in the morning. But they were going to kill me in my cubicle. | |
| The Mysterious Words You Can't Tweet | Top |
 The legend goes something like this: as a child, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's father would relentlessly hound him to "Get better", so Jack eventually banned the phrase from being tweeted. Go ahead and try it, the tweet won't go through. But the legend? It's hoax. Here's the real story... | |
| Devon Steampunk Tread 1 Watch Looks Like Something An Extraordinary Gentleman Would Wear | Top |
 California-based watch maker Devon made a name for themselves a few years ago when they released the Tread 1. The modern looking electro-mechanical timepiece dazzled people with its tread-based system to indicate the time. It was large, highly unorthodox for a high-end timepieces, and a little crazy. A full review of the Devon Tread 1 is here. | |
| Gillmor Gang: Adventures in Medication | Top |
 The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — explodes in opinions about Facebook IPO, Facebook privacy or lack of it, Facebook acquisition frenzy-to-be, and more Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Surprisingly, this one goes on for a record-breaking hour and thirty-nine minutes, proving once again that size doesn't matter. Except in electronic condoms. Also discussed; Why G-Tar didn't win the Techcrunch Disrupt grand prize, why Kevin Marks' Target knockoff doesn't come close, and why Keith Teare is a venture communist. No animals or Wall Street traders were harmed in the making of this film. As John Taschek implied, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Did I mention we talked about Facebook. | |
| Backstage at Disrupt, Greylock's John Lilly on Building Apps for Phones vs Tablets | Top |
 If you're building apps for phones or tablets, here's a must-see discussion for you. We were able to corral Greylock's John Lilly (who recently helped lead an investment in Instagram, right before it was acquired) backstage at Disrupt NYC earlier this week for a more casual conversation about the mobile app ecosystem and hardware. In this short talk, Lilly shared his views about the similarities and differences of building applications for mobile devices, taking care to point out that he sees many great entrepreneurs approaching the phone in a similar manner to how they approach the tablet. While the operating systems are similar on iPhone and other iOS devices (like iPad), for instance, the use cases, usage by time of day, and monetization opportunities are entirely different. Lilly encourages entrepreneurs to ask how to get their ideas on the homescreens of users' phones and tablets. | |
| Selling Software That Kills | Top |
 The government of Syria uses made-in-California technology from BlueCoat Systems to censor the Internet and spy on its pro-democracy activists (who are regularly arrested and tortured, not to mention slaughtered wholesale.) McAfee and Nokia Siemens have done the same in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Amesys of France and FinFisher of the UK aided brutal dictators in Egypt and Libya. Sweden's Teliasonera allegedly took up the same cudgel in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, back in the USSA, Bain Capital recently bought a Chinese video-surveillance company reportedly "used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents," and Cisco "has marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression." You can't help but be impressed by how globalized the oppression-technology industry has become. So what privacy/surveillance story caused an eruption of outrage this week? Yes, you guessed it: SceneTap, a startup that uses facial-recognition software to (anonymously)track demographics at bars and clubs in major American cities in real time. Forget the dissidents risking their lives for democracy: what matters is that the hipsters are creeped out! | |
| Sweating The Small Stuff: Sotheby's Selling Original Steve Jobs Note About Atari Circuit Improvements | Top |
 The auction house Sotheby's is selling an official memo from Steve Jobs to Atari about improving the World Cup Football game. The pages - stamped and signed by Jobs himself - describe circuit diagrams and paddle layouts. Delightfully, the stamp says "All-One Farm Design" and features a Buddhist mantra, "gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl." As you do. | |
| Apple Responds To DOJ eBook Lawsuit, Calls it "Fundamentally Flawed" and "Absurd" | Top |
 Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple and a number of other large U.S. publishers of conspiring to fix eBook prices and filed an antitrust lawsuit. While most of the publishers quickly settled the lawsuit, Apple decided to fight. Earlier this week, as Ars Technica reports today, Apple responded (PDF) to the government's accusations. Apple doesn't mince words in its response. The company's lawyers call the case against Apple "fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law" and say that the idea that Apple tried to reduce competition and fix prices is "absurd." | |
| TinyTap App Lets Kids Create Customized iPad Books & Games | Top |
 TinyTap is a new iPad application designed for kids which introduces a different angle on the "record-your-own-voice" storybooks craze, by offering a playable book or game you and your kids can customize with your own photos, camera shots, music, narration, and more. The resulting creations can then be shared with family and friends. And, for a little inspiration, the built-in TinyTap store offers a collection of pre-made games which kids can customize with their own voice and actions. | |
| Gillmor Gang Live 05.25.12 (TCTV) | Top |
| Gillmor Gang - John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded. | |
| MoPub Launches A "Buy It Now" Private Marketplace For Mobile Advertisers | Top |
 MoPub, an ad serving startup for smartphone apps, is announcing a new way for its publishers to offer their inventory to advertisers — a private marketplace limited to select publishers and advertisers. Basically, the market creates a more direct relationship, where publishers get more control and predictable pricing, while advertisers get early access. Advertisers will get first look a publisher's inventory — MoPub compares the marketplace to a eBay's Buy It Now model, where buyers can skip the auction process and just purchase an item at a set price (in this case, an ad impression). They also get access to special data like demographics, geography, and in-app purchase history. | |
| Gadget Of The Week: The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 | Top |
 There are plenty of ways to get your flight school kicks with your smartphone or tablet — this missile shooting Griffin chopper comes to mind — but few manage to ooze as much style (or cost as much money) as Parrot's AR.Drone 2.0. Getting the thing ready to fly is surprisingly simple. Once you've popped the battery into place, and turned the thing on, the Drone creates its own Wi-Fi network that the control device connects to. From there, just fire up the FreeFlight app on your iOS or Android device and you're off to the races. | |
| SimplyUs Brings Couples Closer, With An App For Organizing Their Lives Together | Top |
 The latest entrant into the couple-sharing mobile app space is SimplyUs, a Toronto-based startup that aims to make couples happier by adding a little organization into their lives. While other apps built for couples are primarily built for keeping a private collection of photos and memories, and providing private communication tools, SimplyUs takes a whole different approach: It's focused on improving couples' lives by helping them to become more organized together. As a result, its main features are built around joint calendaring and list tools. | |
| Death To The Install! Play Facebook Games Straight From News Feed | Top |
 Facebook games just got a lot more viral. People don't want to install and give data permissions to games, they want to play them, so now Facebook is allowing games to be played directly from within news feed or Timeline stories. These previews give gamers a taste and could get them over the install hurdle once they're already addicted. Facebook has to keep delivering growth for apps to get developers to stick around, or better yet, build for it first. Feed gaming could be a big selling point that could get devs to prioritize Facebook's canvas over iOS, Android, Chrome web store, and other platforms that force people to download and install before the fun starts. Some of Facebook's most popular games are already using this tactic. Read more to try out playing Angry Birds, Bubble Witch Saga, and Idle Worship from the feed... | |
| White House Receives Flood Of Innovation Fellow Applications After Its Disrupt Announcement | Top |
 Disrupt isn't just a great launch platform for startups. Earlier this week at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, President Obama's senior technology advisor, Todd Park and U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel announced five new federal initiatives to get entrepreneurs and other innovators to work on the White House's new digital road map for open government. Within the 24 hours after the announcement at Disrupt on Wednesday, Park told O'Reilly's Alexander B. Howard earlier today, the White House received 600 applications to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow and "another several hundred people had expressed interest in following and engaging in the five projects in some other capacity." | |
| PayPal Rolls Out To 15 More National Retailers, Announces Deals With 6 Top POS Software & Terminal Makers | Top |
 PayPal is expanding its in-store payments technology to 15 new national retailers, following its initial brick-and-mortar rollout with Home Depot earlier this year. At a press conference held yesterday at PayPal's San Jose HQ, the company confirmed it is now adding new merchants including Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys "R" Us. The merchants will soon be integrating PayPal technology at their point-of-sale, allowing customers to choose it as an alternative payment option to cash, check or charge. | |
| Facebook Camera Could Backfire and Get All Of FB's Apps Buried In A Folder | Top |
 Not everyone loves Facebook enough to give it three, four, or five spots on their homescreen. So yesterday's launch of Facebook's third consumer iOS app, Facebook Camera, could actually end up reducing usage of Facebook's main app, Messenger, and others by compelling people to consolidate them into a folder. This issue isn't one just for Facebook but for any developer looking to break out specific features of a cluttered omni-app into streamlined standalone apps. Is a lightweight feel worth the risk of app overload? | |
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