Topic - TechCrunch

Score one for technology: Doctors 3D-printed an emergency airway tube that saved a 20-month old baby boy's life. After imaging the boy's faulty windpipe, doctors at the C.S. Mot Children's Hospital printed 100 tiny tubes and laser-stitched them together over the trachea (video below).

Being behind in a market sucks, and it's understandable to want to lash out at the top dog, as Microsoft has shown it's willing to do with Google in search and email, and now with Apple in tablet computers. A brand new Surface ad pits the iPad against Microsoft's Windows 8 tablet, in an attempt to show how much more versatile the Surface is vs. the iOS device.

Although the majority of Shazam‘s over 93 million U.S. users still use the app on their smartphones to identify, tag and share the songs they’re “hearing,” a growing chunk of that user base – around 10 million in the U.S. last year – has used Shazam to identify TV programs and ads. Today, the company aims to better serve this audience with the release of a new, universal iOS application which introduces a number of new features, including the ability to have the “shazaming” process run automa...

After the aesthetic elegance of Dots, prepare for another injection of minimalist puzzle game beauty. Blip Blup is the new game from London-based design house and app studio ustwo -- maker of Whale Trail, a mobile game that snagged an e-book deal, plus a raft of other interesting apps including most recently Rando (random photo-sharing) and Honk (visual messaging).

After scores of accounts were potentially compromised a few months ago, Twitter today launched two-factor authentication through SMS to protect people from hacks and phishing scams on the web. Unfortunately, it may not help shared accounts like big brands and news agencies where multiple people need to be able to log in and out but only one phone number can get the login verification codes.

Porn is the new Tumblr. It seems that everyone with a CS degree and a little free time is trying to cash in (or at least dabble) in the world of online sexuality, a happenstance that I'd chalk up to the ubiquity of boobies online and the potential for perceived riches. But what inspires a pair of designers and artists to create a site that essentially catalogs every NSFW GIF they can find?

OK Go (the band behind hit music videos like "This Too Shall Pass" and "Here It Goes Again") launched its very own game for iOS and Android earlier this month. Titled Say The Same Thing, you play the game with one of your friends or with a randomly chosen player. (If you sign up now, you can also participate in a temporary promotion where people are randomly selected to play with a band member) Each player types in a word, then you see what the other player said, and you use that as prompt fo...

Does my music do better on Facebook or Twitter? Where should my next tour be? Is my new song too repetitive? Musicians can get free answers to these questions and more from BeatDeck, a Y Combinator analytics company launching today. BeatDeck plans to license this data to labels and music stores to help them sign and recommend tomorrow's superstars. Yep, BeatDeck is an enterprise music startup.

There is a misperception about the new Google Cloud Platform that the company put into general availability last week at Google I/O. It's not a brand new platform. It's what Google has used for years. It is Google's foundation. It is what makes Google, Google. And now it's open for the first time to developers and businesses. Google Platform is new in the sense that anyone can now use it. But until now only a relative few number of people have had access to the platform.

While it was missing the skydiving antics of last year’s event, Google’s I/O keynote last week wasn’t short on product launches. In between the splashy updates to Google Maps, Search, Android and everything else Google announced, the company also briefly talked about Web Components for a few minutes. While Google’s Sundar Pichai noted that it’s still early days for this technology, he also said he believes that “the vision for it is clear” and that it will allow developers to build “elegant u...

Sometimes, more medical information is a bad thing. The influential United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against most women getting genetic screenings for their susceptibility to breast cancer. Why? Because the tests are imperfect: for every woman who gets tested for genes associated with onset breast cancer, even more will falsely test positive, leading spooked patients into needless surgery or psychological trauma. Super cheap genetic testing from enterprising health star...

Retooling the traditional public library for a more technically savvy populace is no small feat, especially when library budgets across the U.S. have been gutted these past few years. That sad state of events has forced some libraries to take matters into their own hands. Consider the case of the Northlake Public Library in Northlake, Illinois -- it wants to give its communinity (and especially the town's children) access to a slew of new digital creation tools to help inspire the next genera...

With Xbox 360 having started well but ended in a very confused state, I worry that Microsoft is about to carry over much of its baggage to the new console. Will the company make the same mistake of not listening to the market that it has often made in recent years? Will it continue to believe that there is a burgeoning market for an everything box? Or will it refocus on what matters?

Google made a relatively quiet announcement today regarding how it's pushing the developer ecosystem forward around Google Now, its intelligent personal assistant for Android devices. The company has begun extending mark up tools for emails from select partners, which help highlight flight schedules, hotel bookings and various types of reservations, to make sure that Gmail can spot that information and use it to auto-generate helpful reminders in Google Now.

I remember waking up 6am, going downstairs, and firing up my Atari 800XL. The disk labeled Karateka inserted, the drive would grunt a few dozen times and the screen would flash. Suddenly, with barely any warning, the opening titles would appear and then the music would start - six notes to signal a game that was menacing in its simplicity. The story was simply told. Characters stood in darkened rooms. The Shogun aimed a finger at a door and the princess was forced into bondage. You were the K...

The weekend isn't upon us just yet, but here's a little project to tuck away for when the Sunday doldrums set in -- the New York-based tinkerers/part suppliers at Adafruit Industries have worked up a way to give your old pair of Chuck Taylors a bit of luminescent DIY flair.

While the world goes gaga for Google Glass, a small startup has come up with an intriguing new take on a device which can display information before your eyes. Instabeat is head-up display unit which attaches to swimming goggles and monitors your heart rate, calories, laps and turns during your swim. It's been live on crowd funding platform Indiegogo for a few days and is already poised to reach its modest funding target, meaning the product will actually ship.

Today's three-hour-long Google I/O keynote came with plenty of announcements, but the company mostly assured us that it is focused on building frameworks that can benefit developers and consumers. We saw a more unified company that needed three hours in one session to get their message across. Breaking today's keynote up into two days would have disrupted the momentum coming out of a company that closed the day at an all-time high on the stock market. Key areas of the business saw updates, al...

Flying under the radar amid a flurry of announcements coming out of the Google I/O developer conference this morning, is the bigger news of how Google is stepping up its efforts to compete with online payment giants like PayPal with a revamped checkout process for the web, mobile web, within mobile applications running on Android, and more. It’s a proposed death to PayPal by a thousand cuts, leveraging everything from Chrome to Android and even Gmail. What Google hasn’t quite worked out yet i...

At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced a new Maps API for mobile developers, updates to Maps for Android and iOS and a completely refreshed Google Maps experience on the desktop. After the main keynote, however, Google also announced a major visual refresh for sites that use its Google Maps API.

Phew. Google just spent the last three hours or so showing off new developer tools, APIs, service overhauls, and the occasional gadget, but not everything the search giant rolled out today got a turn under the spotlights at the Moscone Center. Case in point: according to a post on the official Google Commerce blog, Google Wallet support has been baked into Gmail, so users will soon be able to send each other money by simply shooting each other emails.

As one is wont to do, I was checking the French iOS app store rankings this a.m. just to make sure that my old mainstay app "ameli, l'Assurance Maladie" was still in spot No. 3 when sacrebleu! -- Path was the No. 1 free app in France. Now I've never really clicked with Path, rarely checked in with people there (it's super awkward to name drop digitally) and have too much FOMO to stomach scrolling through all the things you people are doing on weekends without me. Though I found the redesign t...

Cydia, a platform commonly thought of as the alternative app store for jailbroken iPhones and iPads, has just today arrived on Android of all places. Though Android is by its nature more open and customizable than Apple's locked-down iOS, it now has a growing collection of apps designed for power users who root their devices - a process that's similar in spirit to the iOS jailbreak. Cydia for Android could soon become home to some of those same tweaks in time - or at least allow developers to...

Rovio Entertainment, maker of the popular line of “Angry Birds” games, announced today that its expanding its business to include third-party titles, which it will publish, distribute and market to consumers. The new program is being called “Rovio Stars,” and makes available the company’s expertise as well as its marketing teams to other publishers. The first title to be released under the new effort is “Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage,” by Nitrome Ltd. The Icebreaker game, which follows the adve...

500 Startups today is announcing the next 28 companies to take part in its Accelerator program, unleashing a largely international class of startups who have come to Mountain View to accelerate their startup progress. There are 28 companies in this Accelerator class, and as usual there's a bunch of diversity there.

At an event in San Francisco at Blue Bottle Coffee, Square debuted a stand built specifically for the iPad, which turns the device into a card-swiping register. Hardware has always been a part of who we are and who we want to be, says Jack Dorsey, CEO and co-founder of Square. "We wanted to build software and hardware that matches," he says.

Cisco today announced the results of its study into consumer’s thoughts about connected and driverless cars. While a large part of the study focused on the role of technology in the car shopping experience (unsurprisingly, nobody likes car dealerships), the study also looked into drivers’ attitudes about driverless cars. Surprisingly, 57% of all of the respondents said that they would trust driverless cars to drive them around, but there are some clear differences between different markets. A...

After weeks of teasing, endless itty-bitty leaks, and about a zillion radio plays of the one track they'd released so far, the entirety of Daft Punk's new Random Access Memories has just hit iTunes, days before the official release. "Why would they do this?" you might ask. "Isn't this just giving pirates a hi-fi copy to spread around?"

Posted without comment because it really doesn't need a comment. I mean, it's the new Arrested Development trailer -- just watch it and count down the days until the Bluth family returns to Netflix on May 26.

Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. I remember when the press first hit about Nest Labs, the guys behind the iPod/iPhone were taking on thermostats everywhere! A collective “huh?” went through the tech industry. It felt like the tech version of the Avengers got together to build an office park, not save the world. After sitting down with Nest co-f...

The technology industry’s newest high-powered political lobby, FWD.us, is unraveling just a month after it launched, as two of its biggest partners, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Yammer’s David Sacks, leave the organization. Begun with a reported $20 million of Mark Zuckerberg’s own money, and rare op-ed by the politically shy Facebook founder, FWD.us has faced a torrent of criticism over funding advertisements that praise Republicans who support the controversial Keystone pipeline (below). Environme...

Nokia has officially pulled back the curtain on the Lumia 928 Windows Phone 8 device, which advertises its PureView camera as its marquee feature. The new flagship phone offers an 8.7-megapixel front-facing camera, which boasts optical image stabilization for better low-light photography and more stable pics overall.

BlueStacks, the startup known for bringing Android apps to PCs and Macs, has been growing like a weed. Last week, the company announced that it had passed the 10 million user milestone, nearly half of which were added in the first quarter of this year. Today, hot on the heels of the news that OUYA has landed $15 million from Kleiner Perkins to bring its affordable, $99 Android-friendly gaming console to the masses, BlueStacks is firing back with some news of its own.

Jack Conte is an Internet musician who became an Internet sensation and now, thanks to Patreon, he's an Internet entrepreneur.

In November 2011, Identified emerged out of public beta on a mission to create a better professional job search engine. Built on top of Facebook data, Identified set out to nibble at LinkedIn's lead in this space by giving both job seekers and companies a better way to connect -- and find talent. To do that, the startup offered a product that it promised would become something akin to the "Google Page Rank for people," assigning a numerical rank (out of 100) to professionals and companies bas...

Mass Appeal, a joint venture that's both reviving the Broolyn-based, graffiti-focused magazine of the same name and also moving into online content, is announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in funding. It's backed by a mix of traditional firms and figures from the hip hop world. The rapper, (and one-time TechCrunch contributor) Nas announced last month that he had invested a "six-figure sum" in the company, and he's also serving as Mass Appeal's associate publisher. Publisher Peter Bitte...

BitTorrent is taking a new step today in its efforts to help creators make money (and make money itself) — it's releasing a new content packaging format called the BitTorrent Bundle in alpha mode. The company has already been working with different creators to launch promotional bundles. For example, author Tim Ferriss packaged chapters of his book with other supplementary media material as a way to promote sales of his newest work, while musicians like DJ Shadow have used BitTorrent to promo...

Viber has made quite a name for itself as a global mobile first company, but today that all changes as the company breaks ground in the desktop space. That means that starting today, Viber's 200 million+ users will have access to their Viber contacts from both mobile and desktop. The rollout is part of a bigger push from Viber, including an update to its iOS, Android and BlackBerry apps to version 3.0. But the real story is this desktop app.

Sick of high-paid tech employees driving up rent prices, protestors in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood held a "Anti-Gentrification Block Party" and beat on a Google bus pinata before cops broke up the crowd. The area has long been home to artists and Mexican-American families. But they're being forced out as techies move in, their employers set up shuttle stops, and housing prices skyrocket.

At its MAX conference in Los Angeles today, Adobe showed quite a few products that will soon be available to its customers, but it also highlighted a number of hardware experiments, including Project Context, a totally re-imagined way for creating magazine layouts, as well as an advanced stylus and a ruler for touchscreens. After the keynote this morning, I had a chance to sit back with Adobe’s David Macy to talk about both the newly announced Mighty pen and Napoleon ruler for touchscreens, a...

In order to discreetly reach abused children, one aid organization designed a clever billboard that only displays a hotline number for people shorter than 4'5". The secret is a precisely serrated surface, a Lenticular lens, that reflects light differently to those looking from above and below a specified height. Shorter people (children) see the following message on a street sign: "If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you," along with a confidential number to call the Spanish organi...

There were plenty of promising startups showing off at Disrupt NY 2013’s Startup Alley (one of them even became a Battlefield finalist as an audience choice), but none managed to yank on the ol’ heartstrings quite as much Tapgram. Long story short, Tapgram aims to dramatically simplify the process of communicating for people who have trouble doing it otherwise.

Speed. That’s what it’s all about these days. The problem: it’s still more effective to use FedEx than trying to squeeze a data load across a network. It’s an absurd reality when it requires a plane to move data from one place to another. It’s not necessary to move terabytes of data all day, all night. Moving hard drives across the continent for a feature film is different from pulling in data to analyze and then presenting in an application. But the loads will have to get heavier with the co...

Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. Follow him @nireyal. How do products tempt us? What makes them so alluring? It is easy to assume we crave delicious food or impulsively check email because we find pleasure in the activity. But pleasure is just half the story. Temptation is more than just the promise of reward. Recent advances in neuroscience allow us to peer into the brain, providing a greater understanding of what...

Sometimes the simplest product demos can be effective. Take a new web editor called Barley. To show off the product, co-founder Colin Devroe opened me a regular old web page, then changed the wording of the page with just a few keystrokes. A small editing menu opened as he typed, but didn't have to access an admin dashboard, open a separate editor, edit any HTML, or anything like that. To be clear, there was more to the demo — but that was the heart of it. The point is to offer a web page edi...

Beep boop boop bee squeee! Happy May 4th a k a Star Wars Day (say the date out loud and you'll figure out why). In celebration, quite a few hardware vendors have released special gear for the day, thereby allowing you to celebrate the magic of George Lucas in proper Mandalorian fashion.