15 TechSupport Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week

This Week On The TS Gadgets Podcast: Smartphone Stuff And Smart Home StuffThis week’s tech news included big announcements from Facebook and Y-Combinator, a sighting of the Tesla Model X on the road, a controversial Indiana bill that has tech leaders up in arms, and the launch of Periscope, a Twitter app that has potential to change the way we communicate online.
At TechCrunch HQ we launched our new daily show, Crunch Report, a roundup of tech news airing weekdays at 4 PM PT. These are our best stories of the week (3/21-3/27).
1. Facebook held its annual developer conference F8, and the company announced a ton of exciting news. You can find our F8 coverage here.

2. Y Combinator’s winter Demo Day took place, and these were our favorite startups from Day 1 as well as the 47 companies that launched on Day 2.
3. Amazon is going after Dropbox, Google and Microsoft with its Unlimited Cloud Storage expansion.
4. Apple acquired FoundationDB, a company that specializes in speedy, durable NoSQL databases.
5. A new iOS game called Mr. Jump racked up 5 million downloads in just four days.
6. YouTube is experimenting with ultra high definition, ultra smooth video playback. Here are the examples.
7. A slightly disguised version of the Tesla Model X was spotted on a highway near Palo Alto.
8. Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed into law a bill that allows private businesses to discriminate against gay and lesbian consumers. Tech industry titans were quick to denounce the move, led by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
9. Josh Constine layed out Facebook’s strategy as a family of apps, and now rather than just being a social network, Facebook sees strength as an interconnected clan of experiences.
10. Alexia Tsotsis went hands on with Twitter’s new livestreaming app Periscope which went live this week, explaining how the app came to be and what it will mean for the future of live video.
11. Jon Russell explains that WhatsApp’s simplicity is the yin to the yang of Messenger’s busy platform in “Facebook’s Messenger Platform Preserves WhatsApp’s Clarity Of Purpose.”
12. Sarah Perez gives her take on the potential – both positive and negative – that live streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat have to change the ways consumers communicate online.
13. Instagram launched Layout, its own photo collage app.
14. Guest writer Bill Maris juxtaposes data from the 2000 dot-com bubble with numbers from today’s technology landscape, providing both sides of the argument as to whether or not we are currently in a tech bubble today in regards to startups.
15. After several days of deliberations, a San Francisco Superior Court jury ruled against all four of Ellen

By: Unknown On 08:51

Continue Reading

You Can Keep Your iPhone In Your Pocket. Don’t Believe Me? Just Watch

Hands On With The All-New Ultra Thin MacBook With Retina DisplayThis is no sidekick. It’s not merely a companion. The Apple Watch completely eliminates the need to pull out your phone in many situations. That was the theme of today’s launch event.
This isn’t just another screen for your notifications. Yes, Apple Watch is time, saved. But Apple Watch is also things done. Hail and find your Uber. Browse and Like Instagram photos. Reply to WeChat messages. Take phone calls with its mic and speaker.

Until now, the perception of smartwatches was that they were merely companions to phones. You might get lightweight alerts and take basic actions from a wearable, but would have to pull out your phone to do anything substantial.
But Apple wants what’s on your arm to do the heavy lifting. That could defeat the top criticism I’ve heard of smartwatches: Our lives are complicated enough.
Many people already feel completely overwhelmed by technology. Ever-present screens, mountains of email, tablets and smart TVs crowding our view, and most annoyingly, the non-stop barrage of notifications and other reasons to pull out your phone.
Some tech enthusiasts were eager for a faster way to parse notifications, hence the rise of the Pebble. But having to bobble functionality between a phone and smartwatch made the issue sound worse, not better.

With the Watch apps shown on stage today, Apple made it clear that you won’t have to learn to juggle.
Your iPhone is still the brain, the transmitter, and the App Store portal for your Watch. You can’t ditch it completely. But when the Watch is doing its job right, your phone is firmly lodged in your pants or purse, not your hand. Seconds wasted opening it are now spent experiencing real life. With the help of the Apple Watch, we can wrestle control of our lives back from our phones.
And that aligns this new device with the philosophy Steve Jobs set forth for Apple years ago when he said “Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them.”

By: Unknown On 02:49

Continue Reading

15 TechSupport Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week

Etsy IPO, Tinder’s Age-Based Pricing, Kleiner Perkins On TrialThis week was Mobile World Congress, so some of our staff was in Barcelona reporting on the latest from the mobile world. Meanwhile, we wrote about Tinder, pretty people, and a pricey new drone. These are our best stories from the week (2/28-3/6).
1. Colleen Taylor reported on the Ellen Pao V. Kleiner Perkins trial, as it entered its second week in court.
2. Samsung revealed two brand new smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge. We went hands-on with the impressive devices to see how they perform. And Darrell explains the story behind the phones’ design departure.

3. We demoed the HTC Vive, a sensor-studded helmet with dual hand controllers that allows you to enter alternate universes. John Biggs argues that HTC and Valve have cracked the VR code with this device.
4. We told you what to expect for next week’s Apple Watch event, and Matthew Panzarino predicts how the Apple Watch will change your behavior and save you time.
5. Xiaomi introduced a new GoPro-like action camera, and it only costs $64.

6. Microsoft and Google are working together to help make Angular 2 — the next (and somewhat controversial) version of Google’s JavaScript web app framework — better.
7. In “Beware The Pretty People,” Jon Evans argues that as the establishment slowly infects and merges with the tech industry, and vice versa, the people who actually think differently will be, and are being, pushed out.
8. Tinder’s “Rewind” functionality went live, giving users the ability to go back in time and swipe right instead of left. And now, Tinder Plus costs more for users older than 30.
9. Lady Gaga’s Backplane pivoted away from creating and managing standalone social networks for brands. It’s now called Place.xyz. Josh Constine gives you the run-down.
10. Darrell Etherington reviewed Parrott’s Bebop drone, a brand new drone featuring a 1080p video camera that captures motion at 30FPS, and that can take stills at 14MP.
11. Online marketplace Etsy filed to go public and is aiming to raise $100M.
12. Instagram ads became clickable, with the introduction of the photo sharing app’s new carousel ads.
13. Matt Burns wrote about the Stratos Card, another card that promises to consolidate your credit cards into one – but this one is worth a closer look.
14. Valve announced Source 2, the next generation of their Source game engine, and it’s free to content developers.
15. The Huawei Watch, from the gadget-maker of the same name, made its official debut onstage at Mobile World Congress.

By: Unknown On 22:14

Continue Reading

15 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechCrunch EventsDisruptStartup BattlefieldCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014All EventsSearch TechCrunchSearch TechCrunchSearchCrunchBaseFollow UsFacebookTwitterGoogle

By: Unknown On 01:12

Continue Reading

Don’t Be Google

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechSupport EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014

By: Unknown On 13:06

Continue Reading

When You Win Dating Game The Catch, You Don’t Chat, You Go Out

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechSupport EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014

By: Unknown On 22:37

Continue Reading