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

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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.

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

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Snapchat Tries Our Stories For Locals Only

Snapchat’s newest feature could turn Our Stories into hip, visual back channels by locals for locals only. The company is currently experimenting with a version of its normally public, big event Our Stories that feature Snaps from a certain location that can only be seen by people nearby. Today it’s running one called

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