This is it, folks. At midnight tonight, Berlin local time, the countdown clock for early-bird tickets to Disrupt Berlin runs out. And when that countdown ends, so does your chance to save 30 percent on admission to Europe’s best tech conference and startup competition. Read More
Everyone’s favorite almost-trillion-dollar company reported fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. And while much of the attention was on stellar iPhone sales, Apple wants to make sure that people know its services business is doing great, too.
“Service revenues reaches all-time high,” was the headline of the press release. But what is services revenue… Read More
Paytm, India’s top digital wallet and payment service, has introduced a chat feature to amp up its appeal among an increasingly competitive market. The new ‘Inbox’ feature, which was first outed in August, is initially available on Android, which accounts for the bulk of Paytm’s claimed 200 million users, and not iOS. It allows users to share messages and photos like… Read More
This is the Xbox One X. It’s the fastest and smallest Xbox and the first to offer games in 4K. At $499 the higher resolution comes at a steep price. After a week with the console and hours of gaming, I can firmly state the Xbox One X is the best Xbox to date. This Xbox has everything. Think about it. The Xbox One X is the culmination of the Xbox project and, right now, at this moment… Read More
Live engagement marketing platform DoubleDutch has replaced CEO Bryan Parker, who was appointed from COO to CEO just two months ago, TechCrunch has learned. Lawrence Coburn, founder of DoubleDutch, has since been reinstated as CEO. DoubleDutch’s board made the decision to replace Parker with Coburn today, according to a source familiar with the situation. Parker first joined the… Read More
If you’re paying attention to the virtual reality market, 2017 would appear to be a pretty awful time to start growing a VR hardware startup.
OculusVR’s famed Kickstarter campaign took place more than five years ago and since then there’s been a burst of activity in the VR market that has driven a lot of hype though actual sales might not have reached stratospheric… Read More
Some changes are underway at Stack Overflow, the online community where some 50 million developers and others converge to talk programming and many other things. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the startup has conducted a substantial number of layoffs across the company as it looks to steer the business more towards its core Q&A products and away from areas that were seeing… Read More
Black Duck Software, a 15-year-old company whose products automate the process of securing and managing open-source software — including detecting license compliance issues — is being acquired by Synopsys, the publicly traded maker of semiconductor-design software. Read More
President Trump’s infamous Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump went offline briefly on Thursday, setting forth a wave of confusion and emotions. Read More
Qualcomm has levied another lawsuit against Apple, this time alleging that the iPhone maker took advantage of its “unprecedented access” to Qualcomm’s code to aid Intel, Bloomberg reports. The news lends credence to a report in Reuters that Apple has designed iPhones bereft of Qualcomm technologies that it could ship as early as next year. Read More
The tax plan proposed by House Republicans has hiding in it the repeal of a $7,500 tax credit that has arguably been one of the main drivers of electric vehicle purchases. Removing the credit would almost certainly adversely affect sales of electric cars just as they are beginning to get affordable to the general public. Read More
Consolidation continues to dog the world of on-demand startups — literally and figuratively. In the latest development, Vetted, a startup focused on veterinary services, is acquiring VetPronto, an almost identical peer. Read More
As part of their latest endeavor to improve care for our country’s combat vets, the Department of Veterans Affairs has invested in a rapidly advancing form of intelligence: the artificial kind. The opportunity to use this growing tech to improve veteran healthcare has rightfully attracted positive attention to some intriguing new initiatives. Read More
The House tax bill released earlier today has something for VCs (and private equity folks, and hedge fund managers) to celebrate: it doesn’t touch the carried interest tax break that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton vowed to do away with on the campaign trail last year. Read More
As simple as it seems, dealing with the keyboard is one of the weirder challenges that many notice the first time they check out virtual reality. Logitech, makers of about a zillion different keyboards, doesn’t want keyboards to fall out of the VR equation. So they’ve built a keyboard for VR. It works with the HTC Vive, and brings both your keyboard and your hands into the… Read More
DNAinfo and Gothamist have both shut down, a week after reporters and editors at the local news sites unionized. Their archives seem to have disappeared — if you visit either front page, or any article, you’re redirected to a letter from CEO Joe Ricketts (pictured above), who trots out some growth numbers before saying: But DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and… Read More
YouTube Kids, the kid-friendly, more filtered version of YouTube first introduced in 2015, is getting a notable upgrade. The updated app is adding several new features designed to reflect the app’s now aging user base, including profiles that are customized based on the kid’s date of birth, as well as additional security controls for parents and kids. Read More
Apple is continuing its run toward $1 trillion today, as a huge fiscal fourth quarter sent the stock to new highs and helped its market cap briefly hit $900 billion — though it’s since leveled off just a bit and is now resting just a hair below that. Read More
We’ve seen streaming services focused on art movies, horror movies and comedy (R.I.P. Seeso) — so why not romance? That’s the thinking behind Passionflix, a startup announcing that it’s raised $4.75 million in seed funding. It’s not like romantic comedies are missing from theaters, or from Netflix, but Passionflix co-founder Tosca Musk said the genre is dwarfed… Read More
