Sarah Perez
Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.
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Latest from Sarah Perez
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Move Loot, a YC-backed furniture resale marketplace, shuts down, sells customer list to Handy
There’s some closure (literally and figuratively) for Move Loot, the furniture resale marketplace that we wrote earlier this month was up for sale. The startup — backed by nearly $22 million in funding from a list of top investors that included Y Combinator, GV, Index, Metamorphic and Sherpa — has shut down its business and sold access to its customer list to Handy, the… Read More
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Twitter targets smaller businesses with launch of Dashboard
Twitter — hot on the heels of the launch of its app for influencers, Twitter Engage — has today released yet another standalone application: Twitter Dashboard. The new service, available on both web and mobile, is aimed at businesses that want to use Twitter to connect with their customers. The app offers a suite of tools, including customized feeds of tweets, tools for… Read More
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Facebook tests new option that pushes users to send money on Messenger
Facebook is testing a new option designed to highlight the company’s ability to handle person-to-person payments through its Messenger chat application. The company confirmed it has added a new option in its flagship app’s main navigation titled “Send or Request Money.” The feature will move Facebook users into Messenger in order to manage payments, or it sends them… Read More
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PayPal puts a charitable giving button in its app for the first time
PayPal is rolling out an update to its mobile application which it hopes will put charitable giving in the forefront of customers’ minds. With a new button that appears at the bottom of the home screen of its app – below options to order ahead or pay in-store – PayPal users can support a favorite cause through an in-app donation. The button connects users to the tens… Read More
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Amazon gives the Alexa ‘app store’ a makeover, now lets you add new Skills by voice
It will now be easier to add “Skills” – new functionality by way of voice-activated apps to Amazon’s smart speaker Echo, and its other Alexa-powered devices, Amazon announced this morning. The company has finally given its Skills “app store” a makeover, and is introducing a means of adding new Skills by voice, too. Amazon’s Echo and other Alexa… Read More
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Amazon expands its Dash Button program to 50 more brands, says orders taking place twice a minute
Confirming reports from earlier this week, Amazon announced this morning an expansion of its Dash button program – the small, push-button devices that allow consumers to place orders of specific products, ranging from paper towels to trash bags to even bubble gum and condoms, via Amazon.com. The retailer says today it’s adding over 50 new brands to the service, which now includes… Read More
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Google Earth and Maps get sharper satellite imagery with new update
Several years ago, Google engineers figured out a way to stitch together satellite imagery to remove clouds, giving Google Earth and Google Maps users a better and more comprehensive view of the ground below. Today, the company has repeated the process, but this time with newer, crisper imagery from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Landsat 8 satellite. When Google first… Read More
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Google opens up its Virtual Reality field trips for all, debuts new apps and services for teachers
On the heels of Amazon’s entry into the learning materials market, Google this morning also unveiled a series of product announcements aimed at expanding use of Google products and technologies in the classroom setting. At the ISTE conference today, the company introduced a number of new tools for educators, ranging from a research project that helps teaches kids to code called… Read More
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Boon + Gable closes on $2.5 million for its in-home stylist and shopping service
Online clothes shopping can be a gamble – you never really know if items will fit until you try them on. Meanwhile, shopping at local retailers can be time-consuming. A startup called Boon + Gable aims to solve both those problems with a service that offers a personal stylist who comes to your home with a curated selection of clothes for you to try, then buy on the spot if you like them. Read More
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Leet debuts a simple app for sharing your best gameplay highlights
Services like YouTube Gaming and Twitch are great for watching videos and live streams from your favorite gamers, but a new app called Leet, launching now, has a slightly different take. Instead of focusing on live-streamed gameplay and real-time chat, Leet lets gamers share short highlights from their favorite console or PC games to its online community and the social web. Others can then… Read More
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WhatsApp hits 100 million calls per day
In February, Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced it had reached one billion users worldwide, and this week, the company added another metric to demonstrate its ongoing traction and growth. According to a brief post on the company blog, WhatsApp claims that it’s now handling more than 100 million voice calls per day on its service. This is equivalent to over 1,100 calls per second, the… Read More
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YouTube expands creator outreach with new features, better support
Along with news that it’s preparing to introduce live streaming support in its main mobile application, YouTube also this week announced a series of new features for its creator community. The details, which include a new Creator Hub, better support, a benefits program and other tools, were unveiled Thursday at VidCon, an event focused on online video and digital culture. In a… Read More
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YouTube can still win the livestreaming war
YouTube, sounding a little miffed that House representatives were livestreaming their sit-in using Periscope and Facebook Live, reminded its community that it has been offering livestreaming on its site since 2011, “before it was cool,” the company snarked in a series of announcements emerging from this week’s VidCon event. That may be true, but a single-purpose app… Read More
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Storyboard helps you turn mobile photos into digital stories and books
Even though printing photos is no longer the only means of viewing and sharing them with others, people still often want to do something more meaningful with these images — especially those of their family and children — than simply sharing them via ephemeral social media posts. A new application called Storyboard, launching today from the Disney-backed startup Twigtale, aims… Read More
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Homescreen.me returns with a new site for sharing your favorite apps
One of the early startups in the app discovery space, Homescreen.me, is relaunching its service that lets you browse which apps others have installed on their iPhone, and now, Apple Watch, too. Despite valiant efforts at creating social networks around apps and app recommendations, one of the best ways to discover those you’ll really like is by word-of-mouth — a friend tells… Read More
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Real-time crash reporting tool Sentry grabs $9 million from NEA & Accel
Sentry, a real-time crash reporting tool for web, mobile and games, has come a long way from its roots as an internal tool used at the blog comment hosting service Disqus. The startup has since been adopted by a number of big names in the tech industry, including Square, Stripe, Dropbox, Opera, Uber, Airbnb, Postmates, and others. And now it has raised $9 million in Series A funding led… Read More
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SoundCloud improves music discovery with new Suggested Tracks feature
SoundCloud is launching a new feature that aims to help its users find new tracks and artists they’ll love, based on their activity and listening history. Called “Suggested Tracks,” the addition is essentially SoundCloud’s attempt at personalizing the service to its individual users in order to keep them engaged and listening to more music and audio… Read More
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YouTube’s 15-minute outage attributed to routine engineering push
A routine engineering push was the source of a 15-minute global YouTube outage this morning, not a hack or DDOS attack. The issue has since been resolved, but was surprising given how reliable the Google-owned service has historically been. At the time of the outage, users who visited the site were met with a “500 Internal Server Error,” blank screens or other error… Read More
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BET Play is Viacom’s new $4 per month streaming service, arriving today outside the U.S.
A new streaming service from Viacom is hitting the international market today: BET Play, a video-on-demand application aimed at an adult audience, offering access to programming from the entertainment-focused BET cable television channel. This is only the second streaming service to emerge from Viacom, but the first for adults. The company previously launched Noggin, which includes a… Read More
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AmazonFresh, Amazon’s grocery delivery service, wakes back up with a launch in Boston
Amazon’s online grocery shopping service, AmazonFresh, is expanding once again – roughly a long hiatus. Following its arrival in London earlier this month, the retailer announced on Tuesday that it would now make the service available to customers in Boston, Massachusetts in select neighborhoods. The city now joins the other AmazonFresh markets in the U.S., including Seattle… Read More
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