Thursday, June 28, 2012

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Hands On With Google's Chrome For iOS: Just Like Chrome For Android, Only Slower Top
App Store - ChromeGoogle today launched Chrome for iOS and it's now available in the App Store. Don't get too excited, though. While it's a nice enough browser, it's hobbled by Apple's rules for third-part developers and doesn't feature Google's fast JavaScript rendering engine. Instead, as Google confirmed to us earlier today, it uses Apple's relatively slow UIWebView to render web pages and that sadly means the browsing experience on iOS isn't exactly optimal. Sadly, the browser feels a bit sluggish on iOS, something that obviously can't be said about Chrome on any other platform.
 
Fast-Growing Luxury Vacation Club Inspirato Quietly Brings In $15.5M From DAG and Millenium Top
Screen Shot 2012-06-28 at 3.25.19 PMCollaborative consumption -- generally, marketplaces for buying and selling access to products and services -- have been defined recently by startups like TaskRabbit and Zaarly for tasks, or short-term rental service Airbnb. But Inspirato is bringing the concept to the luxury vacation market, driving down the cost of renting Tuscan villas, Napa cottages, and even a seaborne yacht coming next July. And it's doing well enough that it decided to raise another $15.5 million this past month from DAG Ventures and Millenium Technology Value Partners, we learned from a regulatory filing that hit this week.
 
Google's TV Strategy Is Doomed Top
th_DoomedI feel like we're watching Google TV roll by and off into a nearby ditch. The company doesn't have much dedication to the platform and, like Apple TV, GTV is failing to gain traction. As Ryan notes, outside of a few I/O sessions, Google said very little about the Google TV project this year and I'm almost certain it means they've scrapped the project but don't want to tell their partners. They are running seminars on the platform at I/O, but until they've officially announced the closure they have to maintain appearances.
 
How Google Pulled Off Their Live Video Skydiving With Glasses Demo Top
google skydiveGoogle won the Internet by pulling off a truly impressive Google Glass skydiving stunt, twice, during their I/O event. Skydivers in wingsuits 4,000 feet above San Francisco delivered the high tech glasses to the Moscone stage in just four minutes, with help of 25 cameras, a zeppelin and a helicopter, stunt bikers and someone repelling down the side of the convention center. The whole thing was shown on live video in a Google Hangout from the skydivers' and bikers' glasses to the surprise of developers in the audience and those watching on YouTube. This was Google's winning answer to Steve Jobs' "One More Thing" and for the moment, it made Apple's ground-based surprises seem less dramatic.
 
Bob Mansfield, Apple Exec Who Has Led Hardware Engineering For Mac And iOS Devices, To Retire This Summer Top
mansfield_hero20110204Bob Mansfield, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, will retire this summer after 13 years with the company. The company announced the news in a press release today. It's a major departure, as during his career at Apple Mansfield has led the hardware engineering of devices including the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and the iPad -- some of the most popular and profitable consumer electronic gadgets in modern history. Mansfield has been well compensated for his efforts
 
You're 37% More Likely To Date Someone If You've Got Facebook Friends In Common Top
Date Mutual Friends"Oh you know Johnny? Then let's get naughty." Whether it's for one night or forever, we're more likely to choose mates who have Facebook friends in common with us. This comes according to a new study by Coffee Meets Bagel, a startup that shows you a suggestion of someone to date each day and connects you if you both fancy each other. Out of Coffee Meets Bagel's 44,000 matches, people with mutual friends are 37.2% more likely to both give each other the thumbs up. Women are much more influenced by the mutual friends effect. And there's even a magic number of acquaintances in common that makes you 90% more likely to want to get frisky...
 
RIM Ships 7.8M Smartphones In Q1 2013, Down 30 Percent From Last Quarter's 11.1M Top
sadberryIt's been a bleak call, thus far. We just heard on RIM's Q1 2013 earnings call that the Waterloo-based company only shipped 7.8 million smartphones this quarter, which is down 30 percent from 11.1 million units shipped last quarter.
 
GymPact Grabs $850K From Guitar Hero Founder & More To Give You Cash For Getting In Shape Top
success-1It's no secret that Americans could lose a few pounds. I'm not calling them fat per se, but let's just say that Hans and Franz are pretty busy these days. In January, GymPact launched a website and iPhone app with the goal of complementing all those newfangled health data trackers, devices, and virtual training apps to incentivize couch potatoes to get up and go to the gym -- or yoga, the pool, or spin class. Today, the TechStars grad is officially announcing that it has raised $850K in seed funding led by Mike Hirshland of Resolute.vc, with contributions from the TEEC Angel Fund, Mike Dornbrook and Alex Rigopolous, the COO and co-founder of Harmonix (better known as the creators of Rock Band and Guitar Hero), Brightcove CTO Bob Mason, and others. As part of the round, TechStars Boston Managing Director Katie Rae will be joining the startup's board of directors.
 
RIM Hits 78 Million BlackBerry Subscribers, Up From 70 Million In September 2011 Top
950Today on RIM's Q1 2013 conference call, CEO Thorsten Heins admitted that "this was a challenging quarter for the company," but announced 78 million subscribers with "churn remaining high." He admitted particular success with the BlackBerry Bold product. For a little context, RIM hit 70 million global subscribers all the way back in September of 2011.
 
RIM's Q1 2013 Results: $518 Million Loss On $2.8 Billion In Revenue, BlackBerry 10 Launch Pushed To 2013 Top
rim-redRIM has just released their fiscal Q1 2013 financials, and they're about as bleak as the company expected. The Canadian company reported a net GAAP loss of $518 million (which breaks down to $0.99/share diluted) on revenues of $2.8 billion. To put that in a bit of perspective, RIM reported a net loss of $0.24/share diluted (or $125 million) on $4.2 billion in revenues in Q4 2012. Meanwhile, analysts expected RIM to report a net loss of $0.03/share on revenues of $3.1 billion in the days leading up to the release. The company also reported that despite their longstanding claims to the contrary, the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone isn't expected to see the light of day until the first quarter of calendar 2013.
 
Fits.me Finally Shipping A New Robot That Makes It Easier To See What You're Going To Look Like In That Suit Top
fitbot01As a fat, lazy blogger, I find myself often buying clothes online only to discover that XXL for a designer in Spain is basically a XXS for babies in America. The resulting shape and return fees were enough to drive me to distraction - until I saw this wild robot call the FitBot. The robot - which is finally in production - essentially takes your measurements and reproduces them in real time. Got a big old tummy and broad shoulders? FitBot will show you what that shirt will look like on you. It can reproduce up to 2,000 body permutations and can be used by, say, an online store to show exactly what a certain shirt will look like on various people.
 
Peel Announces AllPlay TV, A Remote Control For Netflix, DVR, And (Eventually) More Top
UnknownSocial TV startup Peel is at the Google I/O developers conference today, showing off an upcoming Google TV integration called AllPlay TV. VP of Marketing Scott Ellis demonstrated AllPlay TV for me earlier this week. He says it's fulfilling "the vision that we've been aspiring to for a long time — live TV, DVR, and web-based content, multiple sources all brought together in the app experience." In other words, when you want to watch something, you should able to find it in one interface, regardless of the delivery method.
 
Hands On With Google Drive On iOS Top
photo 1As promised at this morning's Google I/O conference, Google has launched a version of its Google Drive application on iOS today, which offers native support for the service formerly known as Google Docs on both iPhone and iPad. The app is live now in iTunes, and looks to give competitor Dropbox a run for its money. Although Google Drive has offered a mobile web version of its service for some time, many people prefer using a native application on their smartphones or tablets. This is somewhere Dropbox has previously excelled, but it no longer has that same advantage after today.
 
Google Bows To Apple: Chrome On iOS Will Use Apple's Slow UIWebView To Render Web Pages Top
chromelogoGoogle is launching Chrome for iOS today. Many pundits assumed that Google was holding back Chrome from iOS because it couldn't use its own rendering engine, however, Google just told us that Chrome will actually use the same rendering engine that Apple makes available to every other third-party developer on iOS.
 
With New Mobile Apps, Eric Schmidt-Backed HealthTap Brings The House Call Back To Healthcare Top
99135v6-max-250x250Over 80 percent of people seek health-related information online, on everything from insurance to help diagnosing aches and pains. As the world goes mobile, so too does health. Instead of using Google for your health queries or perusing WebMD, HealthTap launched last year to give people a way to connect with doctors in realtime via their mobile devices. Today, the startup is announcing a significant update to their interactive mobile health network, including a suite of new apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android and the Web, and a revamped, cleaner UI.
 
White House Will Take To Twitter To Answer Questions About SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling Top
Obama_Tweeting_croppedThe United States Supreme Court today voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act (informally referred to as Obamacare), the health care reform bill that will require nearly all Americans to have health insurance coverage. It's a very, very big deal -- and it's apparent on social media sites that many Americans have very impassioned opinions about the ruling, both positive and negative. And lots of people out there just want to know what it all really means. And at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET) today, the White House will take to Twitter to clear up people's questions and worries, 140 characters at a time.
 
Wait, What? No Update For Google TV? Top
googletv2Heading into Google I/O, there was one thing that confused me: Sony and Vizio announced new Google TV products a few days before the annual developer conference. Which I thought was pretty silly, because like, why would anyone release new hardware days before Google announces new software capabilities at the conference? And then the conference happened, and the answer became clear: Because there is no new software for Google TV. A representative for Google says that its focus at this year's conference is on the devices that are coming out and already in stores, not any update to the platform. That includes Sony's Internet Player with Google TV, which is available for pre-sale now and will retail for $199, and Vizio's Co-Star streaming box, which costs $99 and will go on pre-sale next month. There's also LG's series of Smart TVs, which run the Google TV operating system and went on sale in May.
 
Google Takes Its Google+ Platform Mobile With Android, iOS SDKs & Social Plugins For The Mobile Web Top
Google+ PlatformGoogle+ is obviously a major focus for Google these days, but until now, the company hasn't really focused on extending the Google platform beyond its own services and its +1 buttons. Now, however, the company is extending the Google+ platform to mobile with the upcoming release of its Google+ SDKs for iOS and Android. This new platform will allow developers to use Google+ sign-in buttons, sharing widgets,  and the Google+ history API it quietly launched yesterday. Developers will also be able to pull in public Google+ content through the existing (but limited) Google+ API. In addition to these SDKs, these features are also now available as mobile web optimized social plugins.
 
Like Square But For Corporations: mPowa Launches New Dongle Payment Service In U.S. Top
Screen shot 2012-06-28 at 19.24.38Add one more company to the ranks of hopefuls that want to own the space where dongles and mobiles are used for card-based payments. mPowa, a UK-based startup, is launching in the U.S. today with a solution that looks a lot like Square, Here from PayPal, and others. But while Square and the rest currently target smaller merchants that do not have card facilities already, mPowa is first going after bigger fish: the large enterprises that do. "Our main focus are those businesses who already take cards but lack the mobile point of sale facilities to make transactions on the go, the Whirlpools or charities of the world," Dan Wagner, the founder and CEO, told me in an interview earlier today. "Now they can make home visits or collect money anywhere." And that's not the only difference. The service works on devices covering four different platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows, another way to aim for mass coverage.
 
"In the Studio," PrimaTable's Jamie Davidson Has A Taste for Culinary Experiences Top
Screen shot 2012-06-25 at 12.31.56 PMEditor's Note: TechCrunch columnist Semil Shah is based in Palo Alto. You can follow him on Twitter @semil "In the Studio" enters the summer months by inviting a former YouTube and Google product engineer, who then spent a "gap year" with Kleiner Perkins meeting with business leaders, entrepreneurs, and cooking up his own next move in the Valley. PrimaTable's Jamie Davidson came to the west coast as an engineer, landing at YouTube and eventually Google, where he and his colleagues applied their expertise in operations research to the world of online advertising. During his time at Google, Davidson became interested in the idea of "local," broadly speaking, and after being invited to spend a year at Kleiner Perkins, cofounded and launched his own new company, PrimaTable, which seeks to provide exclusive, highly curated culinary experiences for customers. For instance, Davidson and his team have arranged for exclusive menus at some of San Francisco's premier restaurants.
 

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