CloudFlare launched almost exactly two years ago at the first TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. It was an incredible experience for us, and we owe a significant amount of our success to the stage Disrupt provided us. Since then, we’ve rolled out 23 data centers (one per month since launch), added more than half a million customers’ websites, and powered nearly half a trillion page views through the CloudFlare network. It’s been quite a two years. → Read More
BoingBoing just pointed out a nice piece about Grant Shapps, UK Conservative Party Co-Chair and Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. The Conservative Party has fallen under scrutiny for being too cozy with Google and their practices this year but this seems to offset that considerably.
Shapps runs HowToCorp, one of those ubiquitous link farm services that promises to create heady amounts of Google juice for folks who are trying to squat on a topic like, say, “golf.”
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With all the new features in the iPhone 5, there have been a couple of standout omissions. Reuters, WSJ and others on Friday published articles about how last week’s iPhone 5 launch has put Europe in the slow lane and created winners and losers. Their reason: the device will not support LTE on the 2.6GHz and 800MHz bands, frequencies being most commonly used in Europe for 4G. Similarly, Apple’s decision not to include a “wave and pay” NFC chip has imparted a damning verdict on a technology that many consider the lynchpin of how point-of-sale mobile payments will work. NFC still stands for “Not For Commerce”! quipped the Guardian.
In the follow up to that, there have been some attempts at explanations, both from outside speculators and Apple itself, about why LTE has been configured as it has been; and why NFC is absent. Some interesting points (guesses) being made — among them, it’s a longer-odds game to court carriers at other LTE frequencies (see this GigaOm post); there are problems with implementing an NFC antenna in a metal case (step up, NYT).
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In March we wrote about the launch of UpTo, an iPhone app that attempts to build an event-based social network around your calendar, using the iPhone calendar API. Whether you use Google Calendars, Outlook or Yahoo, UpTo goes for agnostic and works with whatever calendar you already have synced with your phone to eliminate friction that stands in the way of sharing or adding events while you’re on the go.
The app also includes group sharing functionality so that you can add friends from Facebook, exiting contacts, put them into groups, share events from your calendar to UpTo’s feed with a couple of clicks or direct to your social networks. Users can also chat with friends in realtime, along with adding events to GCal, for example, straight from the app. In its attempt to become a GroupMe or Plancast for your calendar, today, UpTo is adding another big piece to the puzzle with a “Discover” section that makes it simple for users to find and follow Event Streams. → Read More
With the rise of cheap and affordable manufacturing facilities, combined with new sources of financing such as crowd-funding, hardware startups are hot once again.
And there is no better evidence of this than a quick dash through the Hardware Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt last week in San Francisco.
We started with a new kind of connected coffee maker and ended with a startup that lets you look at your thoughts. Enjoy. → Read More
Excuse the belated chortle here but it bears noting that Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, seems to have pushed the old maxim of a “new broom sweeps clean” all the way into the darkest recesses of Yahoo. To wit, consider the note the BI found from Mayer to her staff.
Chances are you have a few iPhone or iPod chargers and cables in your house right now and maybe even a speaker dock or alarm clock that lets you plug in your iPhone. In one fell swoop, Apple made these obsolete when it launched its new Lightning connector on Wednesday. In typical Apple fashion, the company didn’t just replace its old proprietary connector it introduced in 2003 with a standards-compliant one. Instead, it went with its own design. The Lightning connector is significantly smaller than the old 30-pin connector, but the one feature that Apple really seemed to feel the need to stress is that it’s “reversible” (because plugging in the old connector was always so hard).
If you made any investment in iPod/iOS hardware ecosystem in the last 10 years, chances are you will need to buy a few of Apple’s overpriced $29 adapters (or $39 with a cable) so you can keep using your devices. → Read More
Facebook’s share price has rocketed up from 19.46 to 22.00 since Mark Zuckerberg talked at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday, and numerous sources in the investment community tell us it was his declaration that Facebook will tackle search that excited them most. Rather than incremental increases in revenue that better ad units could bring, the prospect of the social network taking on a whole new business offers an upside worth betting on.
But what would Facebook search look like? Not a straight-up, standalone search engine say experts and a Facebook employee. But that doesn’t mean Facebook’s double-down on search won’t threaten the mighty Google. → Read More
This week’s iPhone announcement and last week’s release of the new Kindle Fire, Windows 8/Nokia Phone, and Droid RAZR by Google/Motorola offer the latest evidence that, over the past few years, the U.S. has regained global leadership in key areas of communications technology.
These high-powered devices, and the demands they place on our broadband networks, underscore a critical challenge. To ensure the U.S. is at the forefront of the next wave of Internet innovation, we need to drive continued improvements in our wired and wireless broadband infrastructure – super-fast, high- capacity, and ubiquitous broadband networks.
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Not only were there country pavilions at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last week, but also themed ones like Hardware Alley and the Impact Pavilion.
Here, you could peruse startups in the themes of health, energy and transport, a few of which of which were put together by the Greenstart accelerator programme and Solar Mosaic.
We caught up with the guys to hear what they had on display.
Here are the companies we talked to in this segment: → Read More
At the time that Path was first introduced as a new social network for mobile devices, there were already many options for connecting with friends, family, and coworkers. So why build another? Path CEO and co-founder Dave Morin told me in an interview backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt that he and his cofounders were looking for ways to connect users closest to one another — and building for mobile was the best way to do that.
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When Ning co-founder and former CEO Gina Bianchini launched Mightybell a year ago, a startup aimed at helping you accomplish things in small, incremental steps and show others how to do the same, it essentially allowed you to create step-by-step private guides for anything. But the startup is shifting its focus slightly away from the private, step-by-step product into a more collaborative, open public platform for people to share their ideas in groups.
Now Mightybell is focused on offering sleek, design-focused collaborative online spaces for creative projects. The step-by-step product is still available, but is located here under the product name “Steps.” → Read More
As a long-time contributor to TechCrunch, I again had the privilege of hanging out backstage and seeing the TechCrunch team put on what was, in my mind, the best Disrupt conference I’ve been to. In addition to having a really good time, the content generated both on stage, during the battlefield, and backstage with TCTV was astounding, a great place to reconnect with friends, and a special setting to monitor the pulse of Silicon Valley in this moment in time.
In that spirit, as I’ve done for the past conferences, I wanted to reflect on the key themes I observed during Disrupt. As a disclaimer, please note this isn’t an objective summary of the three days, but rather reflections seen through my own lens. I’m also not going to discuss the excellent Battlefield companies, as they were well-covered this week and the quality of pitches in the finals were very good. A few days after the event, these three themes continue to ring in my mind. → Read More
In the last of our three part series of video highlights from Disrupt SF, we focus on Wednesday when YourMechanic won the Startup Battlefield competition.
Earlier in the day, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick explained how he goes up against regulators trying to block his disruptive business model. Yammer CEO David Sacks was asked whether his company was ever in serious acquisition talks with Salesforce or Twitter before it was sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. And Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures explained why he doesn’t like to refer to himself as a venture capitalist, preferring to be called a mentor instead. → Read More
The South American entrepreneurial community is no longer a small band of companies vying for attention. Instead, it is a full-fledged movement with an ecosystem that is creating new connections for the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the rest of the world.
These entrepreneurs represent a movement now. They are the “TecnoLatinas” and their growing strength became readily apparent this past week at Disrupt San Francisco 2012. → Read More
Editor’s note: Spencer Rascoff is CEO and a director of Zillow Inc. He previously co-founded Hotwire.com, which was sold to Expedia in 2003. Before his consumer Web career, Spencer was a private-equity investor at TPG Capital, and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and Allen & Company.
Following the closely watched Facebook IPO, there has been increased scrutiny around the IPO process and a lot of discussion about whether certain companies are ready for public markets.
It’s been a little more than a year since Zillow went public, and I’m regularly asked about our performance relative to other technology companies that have gone public in the past couple of years. Ultimately, I believe the markets recognize and reward companies that execute well. But the road leading to an IPO is a complex one, and every chief executive and board must ask, “Should we go public, and, if so, should we go public now?” → Read More
The Chilean Pavilion joined the roster of other Latin American startups at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last week.
Our task was to show you as many of them as we could in as short amount of time as possible – that meant a fast run through with a camera.
Thus we found companies doing facial recognition, ad retargeting, opinion polls, algorithmic trading and a social network for freelancers, amongst others.
Here are the companies we ran into: → Read More
“In the Studio” taped a special segment this weekend during TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, welcoming backstage an engineer, PhD dropout, entrepreneur, founder, and long-time investor in enterprise IT to talk about current trends in the space.
Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, has amassed an impressive career in the enterprise field, helping found VitalSigns and investing in companies such as Jive, Nimble Storage, and Palo Alto Networks, among many others. While many folks believe the enterprise space is hot all of a sudden, the reality is that entrepreneurs, such as Nir Zuk, who co-founded Palo Alto Networks, and investors like Goetz, among others, who back them, have been toiling away in the space for the last decade, if not longer, and show no signs of slowing down. → Read More
The United States has never ranked at the top of international education tests, since we began comparing countries in 1964, yet has been the dominant economic and innovative force in the world the entire time. Despite this fact, a popular annual education report has once again stoked fears of America’s impending economic mediocrity with fresh stats on how far the US ”lags” behind the world in college attainment, pre-school enrollment, and high school graduation. → Read More
As you may have noticed last week that I planned an impromptu mini-meetup in Taipei. We’ve decided on a location – OnTap Taipei – on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, at about 8pm.
To RSVP pop over to Plancast or email me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line “TAIPEI.”
Special thanks to Richard from VIA who helped out planning this little soiree. → Read More
Editor’s note: Bernard Leong is co-founder of SGE, an online portal dedicated to entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia, and This Week in Asia, a podcast dedicated to tech news in Asia. Follow him at BernardLeong.com or on Twitter: @bleongcw.
A few months ago, I made a point that winter has landed in Southeast Asia with the fast and furious expansion of Rocket Internet, the Germany-based company started by the infamous Samwer brothers — Mac, Oliver, and Alexander. I concluded that, while the company may be bad for innovation, it has demonstrated good examples of execution and speed to the rest of the technology ecosystem within the region. While monitoring Rocket’s revolving door of executives, employees complaining about their ways, and startups — like Home24 – that shut down within a short period of time, I began to wonder: “Is it going to work or fall apart?” → Read More
Editor’s note: Ariel Garten is the co-founder and CEO of InteraXon, a Toronto-based company that builds brainwave-enabled products and applications. In her work as a neuroscientist and entrepreneur, Ariel’s insights into how the human mind works are creating new ways for society to interact with the world – and ourselves – using the power of our brains. Follow her on Twitter: @ariel_garten.
Last month, researchers from UC Berkeley, Oxford, and University of Geneva posted results of a joint research study suggesting hackers could hijack a brainwave-reading headset and attempt to uncover sensitive user information – think PINs and bank information. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Gross is co-founder of Percolate, a marketing company with a mission to help brands create content at a social scale. Follow him on Twitter: @James_Gross.
There’s been much buzz around the term “native advertising” lately. And with the buzz has come a bit of backlash, and it’s been mostly from publishers who are looking at the native solutions for their sites and saying it is nothing more than a banner ad in a different spot.
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LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman has become known for giving solid advice — both to the entrepreneurs in which he invests, as well as the general public with his recent book The Startup Of You. So when he came backstage at Disrupt SF earlier this week after his fireside chat with Michael Arrington, we just had to ask him: What is some bad advice that people often give to entrepreneurs that they should ignore? → Read More
Continuing our look back at the SF Disrupt conference video highlights, Tuesday featured the standing-room only interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In his first interview since the IPO, he called his stock performance disappointing and talked about his biggest mistake. Investors focused on the positive comments, including progress in the mobile business, and Facebook’s market value soared $6.785 billion after the speech. It might be the first nearly $7 billion interview. → Read More
Delta is joining American Airlines and Southwest Airlines as the third major brand to deny travel startups access to users’ frequent flyer accounts for the purpose of tracking airlines miles and rewards. Startups affected include TripIt (reportedly*), MileWise and AwardWallet (confirmed) and others. Here’s the situation in a nutshell: the airlines think your rewards data is theirs. Users think they own their own data. Imagine that!
What’s worse, is that airlines are actually pissing off some of their most important customers – frequent flyers – when they do things like this. It’s a group that’s critical to airlines’ bottom line. → Read More
Apparently not wanting GoDaddy and GitHub to have all the outage fun this week, Cloudflare confirmed on Twitter that it had issues this morning. Some sites may still be experiencing issues. → Read More
Apple is rumored to be prepping a Pandora-like service providing virtual radio stations to users, according to the WSJ, and though it didn’t debut at this past week’s Apple event, I think there’s still a strong chance it’s coming. It’s no on demand streamed music delivery like Spotify or Rdio, but it’s another step in that direction, and one that Apple has been slowly moving toward since it began offering digital music through iTunes in the first place.
Apple must, like the rest of us, see the writing on the wall for locally-stored tunes, and while convincing its licensing partners that the future is all-streaming might be a Herculean task, Pandora-style delivery is a natural progression for the iPhone maker in an attempt to get labels to swallow their medicine, bitter-tasting as it may be in the short term. → Read More
Editor’s Note: Tadhg Kelly is a game designer with 20 years experience. He is the creator of the leading game design blog What Games Are, and consults for many companies on game design and development. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Companies often shout in the games industry. They yell with videos, music, press events with booth babes and the monster that is E3. They hustle and go balls-to-the-wall for attention. They make big noise in order to get you to notice what they’re up to and write about it. Everyone, that is, except the two companies who have probably been most crucial to the last few years of the industry: Apple and Nintendo.
What they do they have in common? → Read More
For anyone that has followed Silicon Valley for the past ten years, Jay Adelson is a name that you know quite well. He’s best known for his work with Digg, during its heyday. After moving into the CEO position at SimpleGeo, which has since been acquired by Urban Airship, we’re told that Adelson is ready to make another run at a startup.
A tipster says that Adelson posted in a private Facebook group for former Digg employees last night, suggesting that he’s re-entering the startup world, and is doing some recruiting as well. → Read More
