Uber took its self-driving vehicle fleet to Arizona after being kicked out of San Francisco, Tim Cook cleared up why he met with Trump, and executive level shakeups occurred at Twitter this week. These are the top tech stories all in one place. Read More
Super Mario Run may have its detractors, but it’s also managed to rack up nearly 10 million downloads per day in its App Store debut, officially topping 50 million downloads as of Friday. Those numbers, combined with its early revenue generating power, have Nintendo still keen on exploring more in mobile, with plans to release around two or three new mobile games per year beyond… Read More
Snapchat wants you to play with your face, not just take pictures of it. New Selfie Lens filter games are starting to appear to users, creating an addicting new Snapchat feature that also inspires competition between friends and could become a powerful ad revenue driver. Snapchat confirms this is the launch of a new, native games feature. Back in March, Snapchat tested a limited run of a… Read More
The developers of popular celeb-themed games including Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Nicki Minaj: The Empire, Glu Mobile, acquired Plain Vanilla Corp., and its mobile social trivia game QuizUp this week, according to an SEC filing.
The deal was valued at $7.5 million, including forgiven debt, according to sources familiar with the deal.
This is undoubtedly a disappointing fate for the… Read More
Salesforce has always liked to think of itself as an industry irritant, the company that was bucking the status quo and making the established players feel uncomfortable. But this year as the cloud mainstreamed and Salesforce took off on a $10 billion run rate, you couldn’t help but feel that after 17 years in business, that Salesforce’s time had finally come. The company went on… Read More
The off-duty police officer who killed the Russian ambassador in Turkey was shot by Turkish special forces minutes after the crime. He had an iPhone 4S on him, and now, according to MacReports and Habertürk, Turkish authorities asked for Russia’s help to unlock the iPhone. Given that it’s an iPhone 4S and it has a 4-digit passcode, it should be quite easy to unlock the device.… Read More
After back-to-back Pokemon GO Halloween and Thanksgiving events, everyone was preeeetty sure Niantic would do something to bring players in through the Winter Holidays — but noone really knew what. Here’s what they’re doing: Read More
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox every day of the week, sign up here and be sure to take a look at the rest of our newsletters while you’re at it. Uber rage quits California, Pokémon Go hits the Apple Watch hype wall and Super Mario… Read More
Amazon’s push into the private-label business continued this month, with the launch of its latest brand, Wickedly Prime. Unlike Amazon’s more recent entries in the private label space, such as Happy Belly, Mama Bear and Presto!, Wickedly Prime is the first brand since the debut of Amazon Elements two years ago to make its affiliation with Amazon known. This represents a… Read More
Researchers at Binghamton University in New York have created a “bacteria-powered battery on a single sheet of paper.” The project is aimed at creating batteries for disposable microelectronics that can run for weeks using a little bacteria-rich liquid. “The manufacturing technique reduces fabrication time and cost, and the design could revolutionize the use of bio-batteries as… Read More
3D body scanning isn’t very exciting right now – you can’t really use your scan anywhere except maybe on Thingiverse where people can print you out and create a shrine to you (hint hint!). Wolfprint, however, wants to bring 3D body scanning to the masses by putting their pod-shaped scanners in airports and malls, allowing you to create 3D avatars of yourself for use in… Read More
Disney-ABC is going after cord cutters with the launch of a suite of streaming TV apps for the Fire TV, aimed at bringing ABC stations’ local news to those who don’t pay for cable. The company this week launched eight apps that cover all its ABC-owned stations, each delivering local news to that market, along with weather, community news, an evening video digest with the… Read More
Looks like people really do like animal videos. The team at The Dodo (an online publisher focused on those aforementioned animals) told me their videos were viewed 1 billion times in November. That’s an increase of more than a tenfold from January, when Dodo videos received a mere 80 million views. The Dodo follows a “distributed” media strategy, which means that the majority… Read More
Baidu is demonstrating some of its most recent tech advancements in novel ways, including a partnership with KFC China (yes, the fried chicken KFC). The search giant sometimes referred to as the ‘Google of China’ partnered with KFC to open a new “smart restaurant” in Beijing, which employs facial recognition to make recommendations about what customers might order,… Read More
Hit UK FinTech startup Nutmeg has raked in another $14.6m (£12m) for its Series D round, bringing the total to $51m (£42m). The £12m comes from the Taipei Fubon Bank, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s second largest financial services firm. Last month it announced a £30m raise led by Convoy, Hong Kong’s largest listed independent financial advice firm and existing backers including… Read More
Newer Tesla Model S and Model X owners get a big benefit vs. their predecessors – all the sensors and computing power onboard needed to achieve full self-driving when the software’s ready. But they also had to deal with a temporary inconvenience, since they shipped without the majority of Tesla’s current Autopilot features, which provides advanced semi-autonomous driving for… Read More
The USTR dropped its annual blacklist calling out marketplaces that are rife with counterfeit and pirated goods this week.
Many of the shopping centers and sites listed in this “Special 301” report were absolutely predictable, like Beijing’s Silk Market, St. Petersburg-based social network VK.com, or The Pirate Bay, which was formed by an anti-copyright group in the first… Read More
Jason Kilar’s interest in customer service was sparked by a visit to Disney World when he was 10 years old. The wonder he felt as he walked underneath the train station and out onto Main Street stays with him to this day. Read More
Uber stops self-driving pilot in SF, sweet Tesla Gigafactory drone footage, VW dreams of a self-driving future and Tesla won’t let autopiloters speed. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
