Kiran Upadhyay

If you're a game company looking to release an HD remake this year (and looking at the 2015 release schedule, there are plenty of you out there), then the Homeworld Remastered Collection is one of the better blueprints you could look to. As the name implies, this isn't just a remake of the Relic’s 1999 masterpiece Homeworld. The package also Includes a revamped version of the slightly less classic (though still quite good) Homeworld 2, as well as unaltered versions of both games for absolute purists out there who like their three-dimensional space strategy raw and low-res. Those who don't mind sacrificing historical accuracy for convenience will find familiar gameplay from a one-of-a-kind duology that’s prettier than ever. That much is clear just from replaying through the first few missions in both included single-player campaigns—the atmospheric heart and soul of Homeworld. What’s still unclear is Gearbox's new "unified" multiplayer, which encompasses ...

PhotoMath is a nifty little app. You point your phone camera at a math equation, and it will give you the answer and show you all the steps to solve this particular equation. Following its huge success in the App Store, the app is coming to Android. When I first played with PhotoMath before the team took the stage in our Battlefield competition at Disrupt London, I was impressed by its design and overall user experience. Solving a math equation with a computer is nothing new — WolframAlpha has been doing that for years. But typing an equation inside WolframAlpha’s app is a painful process. With PhotoMath, you point, you shoot and you’re done. And now, in addition to coming to Android, the app now supports quadratic equations, inequalities and more. The app is faster and the solution screen has been revamped as well. What I didn’t expect is that so many people would find it useful. In just 24 hours, the app rocketed to the top of the App Store, and people attending Disrupt Lond...

Artificial intelligence, machines and software with the ability to think for themselves, can be used for a variety of applications ranging from military technology to everyday services like automated telephone systems. However, none of the systems that currently exist exhibits learning abilities that would match the human intelligence. Recently, scientists have wondered whether an artificial agent could be given a tiny bit of human-like intelligence by modeling the algorithm on aspects of the primate neural system. Using a bio-inspired system architecture, scientists have created a single algorithm that is actually able to develop problem-solving skills when presented with challenges that can stump some humans. And then they immediately put it to use learning a set of classic video games. Scientists developed the novel agent (they called it the Deep Q-network), one that combined reinforcement learning with what's termed a "deep convolutional network," a layered sy...

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to enforce net neutrality rules that prevent Internet providers—including cellular carriers—from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. The most controversial part of the FCC's decision reclassifies fixed and mobile broadband as a telecommunications service, with providers to be regulated as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. This decision brings Internet service under the same type of regulatory regime faced by wireline telephone service and mobile voice, though the FCC is forbearing from stricter utility-style rules that it could also apply under Title II. The decision comes after a year of intense public interest, with the FCC receiving four million public comments from companies, trade associations, advocacy groups, and individuals. President Obama weighed in as well, asking the FCC to adopt the rules using Title II as the legal underpinning. The v...

Verizon is just so mad at the Federal Communications Commission today that a normal press release wouldn't do. After all, Verizon issues so many press releases denouncing the FCC for trying to regulate telecommunications that today's vote on net neutrality required a special one to make sure it would be remembered. So Verizon wrote it in Morse code and set the date as "1934" to make the point that the FCC is taking us backward in time. Verizon sent out the press release in this e-mail: After some more Morse code, Verizon says, "Readers living in the 21st century can read the translated statement here." That statement is dated February 26, 1934, the same year Congress passed the Communications Act, including the Title II part that the FCC is using to regulate broadband providers. Despite this protest, Verizon hasn't been shy about using Title II to its benefit. The company was already a Title II carrier for its wireline telephone and mobile voic...

One of the most bewildering trends I've seen in gaming over the last few years is Hollywood's obsession with adaptations of games that have next to no narrative, plot, or character of any kind. It's one thing to adapt the lore of Assassin's Creed or The Legend of Zelda into less interactive forms, especially after films like Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia did well at the box office. It's another to purchase the film rights to the likes of Tetris, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Spy Hunter, all of which have or had film projects in the works at some point... for some reason. This is all a long-winded way of contextualizing the bewildering news that the immensely popular "Settlers of Catan" board game has been optioned for film and TV adaptations by producer Gail Katz, a veteran of blockbusters like The Perfect Storm and Air Force One. "I’ve been wanting to see an adaptation of the game for years, ever since my Catan-obsessed college-aged kids i...

Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo has admitted that laptops shipped to stores and consumers in late 2014 had malware preinstalled. You might want to read that again. A major manufacturer with $38.70 billion sales in 2014 alone, has been selling computers that are actively invading their user’s privacy, enabling man in the middle attacks and basically undermining trust. Meet Superfish. Actually, Don’t. Central to this revelation is a piece of software – until recently considered crapware or bloatware – called Superfish Visual Discovery, a browser extension that ships preinstalled on Lenovo computers ostensibly as a technology to “find and discover products visually”. Because obviously you can’t discover products with your ears. The idea is that Superfish, present as a browser extension, analyses images that you view on the web, checks if they’re products, then offers “identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices”. How does it work? “The Superfish V...

Stayzilla, an India-based service that combines regular hotel bookings with short-term, Airbnb-style rentals, has announced a $20 million Series B round to grow its business. The round, details of which leaked last week, was led by Nexus Venture Partners and existing investor Matrix Partners. Stayzilla, which was founded in 2010, nabbed an undisclosed Series A round in October 2013 having closed a $500,000 seed-round in 2012. Stayzilla is an interesting beast. The overall focus is on letting users book accommodation across India for a stay of up to one month. The startup — which makes money via a varying rate of commission on each booking — initially went after traditional stays, such as hotels and guest houses, but hit a growth spurt when it eased up on how it managed ‘alternative’ accommodation selection — principally peer-to-peer rentals and homestays. Stayzilla CEO and co-founder Yogendra Vasupal told TechCrunch that the service had around 22,000 rooms — 36 percent of whic...

Apple is offering a new repair program that extends coverage for certain MacBook Pro models made between 2011 and 2013 that are exhibiting problems related to video. The program offers either free repairs on affected models, or reimbursement for repairs already paid for by users. To check if your MacBook Pro is among those covered by the extension, head to Apple’s support tool and enter the serial number that you can find on your machine’s “About This Mac” dialog box under the ‘’ menu in OS X. Models that may be affected include the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro, as well as the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, provided they were manufactured during the 2011 to 2013 time span. Symptoms your machine may be exhibiting if it’s affected include video distortion, lack of video or image despite a powered-on computer, or unexpected system restarts. Only in the case of a Mac actually showing these symptoms should you contact Apple to take advantage of the repair program, since othe...

Renaissance Learning, the Google-funded K-12 assessment and learning analytics service with a valuation north of $1 billion, today announced that it has acquired UClass, a cloud storage and content management service school districts can use to store, distribute and analyze their curriculum catalogs. The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. Until now, Renaissance Learning’s focus was mostly on analyzing student performance and helping them recognize what skill to focus on next. UClass approaches analytics from a different perspective: the district level and the state standards these districts have to fulfill. By combining the two services, Renaissance Learning — which is currently being used by about a third of U.S. schools — will be able to help teachers match students to the right content that’s already approved by the state and part of its curriculum. This way, teachers will be able to see how students are doing and quickly match them with ...

We’ve made it! 2015. The year of hoverboards and self-tying shoes, according to Back To The Future. So far, we have neither of those things*. But we do have this absolutely ridiculous iPhone case modeled after Doc Brown’s DeLorean, so we’ve got that going for us. (* THOUGH NIKE KEEPS SAYING THEY’LL RELEASE A PAIR OF SELF-TYING POWER LACE SHOES THIS YEAR) While nifty beyond reason, the case is… admittedly a bit silly. It makes the already portly iPhone 6 considerably bigger, and requires you to slide parts of it around to use the camera, and open the car’s doors to use the volume buttons. It’s perhaps the least practical iPhone case imaginable, outside of encasing your phone in concrete. But… practicality? Where we’re going, we don’t need practicality. I mean, come on. It lights up when people call! The headlights blink with your ringtone! It makes it look like you’re holding a massive toy car to your face! What’s not to love? Built by Bandai primarily for distribution i...

Bad news, everyone. Your email address from the nineties isn’t working right now. Aol Mail has been down since early this morning. We’ve reached out to get more information, but have so far not heard back. According to Aol’s DownDetector the service has been having issues since 4:10 AM EST. Aol Mail’s twitter handle has been flooded with users complaining they cannot connect. As of right now, the service is MIA.

500 Startups, the U.S. startup investor/accelerator with a reputation for backing startups across the world, is deepening its efforts in Asia with a new $10 million micro-fund for Thailand. The organization launched a $10 million fund for Asia — ‘500 Durians’ — in 2013, but this new one — ‘500 TukTuks’, named after the iconic taxis pictured above — is dedicated to Thailand, a country where there are few VC firms. 500 Startups declined to comment on the fund when we contacted the company, but TechCrunch has reviewed pitch documents provided to investors and confirmed its existence with multiple sources within Thailand’s startup community. The fund is not closed yet, but a formal announcement — including details of its first investment(s) — is expected to be made next month. 500 Startups has already invested in more than eight Thai companies via 500 Durians, so now it is doubling down on the country. It plans to use half of the 500 TukTuks fund to invest in early-stage startups ...

elebrities aren’t like you and me. They’re better. Or at least Facebook thinks they’re worth more money. Convince experts and influencers to like something, and everyone will follow their lead. The question is how to identify who these special people are, and Facebook’s just patented one of the trickiest ways yet. The idea is that Facebook could watch the rate at which a piece of content like a link is shared, then figure out whose posting led to a sudden increase in share rate in their network. Those people are the influencers, and the people that they discovered the content from are the experts. Facebook could then target those people with ads and presumably charge businesses a boatload to reach them. It makes perfect sense. Why would it cost the same amount to reach someone famous, powerful, or widely cited as someone whose endorsement won’t sway people? Spotted by PatentYogi and Mikhail Avady, the “Identify experts and influencers in a social network” patent was first ...

The Apple Watch is coming very soon, with a launch date of April offered by none other than Apple CEO Tim Cook, so understandably, the supply chain is moving to meet initial demand. Apple has ordered between five and six million devices to be produced in preparation for the kick-off of sales, the Wall Street Journal reports today, a figure which puts Apple’s expected demand for its first wearable somewhere close to initial expectations for the original iPad. Apple’s smartwatch is expected by many to obliterate the existing appetite for wearables from other manufacturers, and an initial order of 5 million would indeed reveal anticipated sales far above the estimated 720,000 devices across all Android Wear manufacturers the occurred during the entirety of 2014. But Apple is also nimble with its order and supply chain structure, so this could change quickly depending on whether we see far more or far fewer shoppers flock to the Apple Watch upon its release. Apple’s distribution of...

A round of applause for the U.K.-made Raspberry Pi microcomputer — which has just passed the 5 million sales mark, some three years after it was first launched with the over-modest goal of selling “a few thousand” Pi over its entire lifetime, as creator Eben Upton has said. How wrong can you be, and how good must that feel? Having a tasty price-point — of $35 for the Model B Pi, and just $25 for Model A — has kindled remarkable interest in Pi-powered homebrew computing. Everything from DIY computers to robotics projects are being built with Pi at their core. Whole startup businesses have also found a use for a low cost credit card-sized microcomputer. The original Pi mission was about getting more U.K. schoolkids coding, and it’s making progress there. But Pi’s influence has spread far further — it’s proved especially popular in North America, according to Upton. The Foundation also recently launched a fully fledged sequel: the Pi 2, which is around 6x faster and has double the m...

Let’s get this out of the way: if you’ve any interest in drones but have been put off by the price, buy the Syma X5C. The X5C flies remarkably well, handles smoothly and the drone is surprisingly well built. It’s not without its flaws however: the remote is poorly made, the battery life is pretty short and the camera is barely worth mentioning. The Syma X5C can be purchased on Amazon for around $60, but at the end of this review we’ll be giving ours away! Although the Syma X5C is one of the cheapest quadrocopters with an HD camera, the Juyo Vonsan is $10 cheaper and has a resolution of 640 x 480, and the market is flooded with sub-$30 mini-drones without a camera. Syma also a cameraless X5 for around $40. What’s in the Box The Syma X5C comes with everything you need to start flying. In the box is the drone, two spare propellers, four propeller guards, the remote control, the drone’s battery, a charger, a screwdriver, a 2 GB micro SD card, an adaptor for connecting it to y...

A company called Elemental Path is developing a new line of smart toys for children which will be powered by the super computing system IBM Watson, enabling the toys to engage in real and personalized conversations with kids, and evolve with the child as he or she grows. CogniToys, as the toy line is being called, is today introducing its first entry into this space, with a smart dinosaur toy that supports full speech recognition and can chat with kids, tell them jokes and answer a wide variety of “who,” “when,” “where” and “why” questions. The startup is now live on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $50,000 to take the toys into production. Co-founded by Donald Coolidge and JP Benini, previously of software development shop Majestyk Apps, along with Arthur Tu, Elemental Path came about after the team won a developer competition which allowed them access to the IBM Watson technology, making them the first toy company to be able to tap into the system. While none of the co-f...

CANCUN, Mexico — In 2009, one or more prestigious researchers received a CD by mail that contained pictures and other materials from a recent scientific conference they attended in Houston. The scientists didn't know it then, but the disc also delivered a malicious payload developed by a highly advanced hacking operation that had been active since at least 2001. The CD, it seems, was tampered with on its way through the mail. It wasn't the first time the operators—dubbed the "Equation Group" by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab—had secretly intercepted a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination. In 2002 or 2003, Equation Group members did something similar with an Oracle database installation CD in order to infect a different target with malware from the group's extensive library. (Kaspersky settled on the name Equation Group because of members' strong affinity for encryption algorithms, advanced ob...

Apple is working on a car, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Mac maker kicked off a top-secret project to develop an electric car with a minivan aesthetic, per the WSJ’s sources, after CEO Tim Cook approved the project nearly a year ago. It includes “hundreds” of staffers and is led by Ford Motor vet and Apple VP Steve Zadesky. The project involves research into battery tech, robotics and metal production, according to the paper. The report comes hot on the heels of a Financial Times story confirming Apple R&D efforts around car tech, and goes further than either that report or an earlier one from Business Insider wherein an Apple employee reportedly confirmed some kind of car-focused project. As I wrote earlier, it makes perfect logical sense that Apple would focus some effort on this area, given the direction in which the tech industry in general is headed. Apple has allotted for as many as 1,000 people to work on the project, according to the newest report, and th...

Dear Google: what happened? Android sales are falling. Chrome has become a bloated hog. Analysts are calling you the new Microsoft, or, much worse, “the new Yahoo!” And most damning of all: you have squandered our trust. You used to be special, Google. Or at least we used to believe you were special. But you seem more and more like just another megacorporation. Does that sound harsh? Consider the Zoe Keating kerfuffle: YouTube gave Keating a take-it-or-leave contract, some terms of which were unacceptable to her. Some of the terms were also pretty hard to understand […] As YouTube now explains it — following a public debate following Keating’s blog post — Keating has a relatively simple choice […] These responses go against descriptions of the agreement presented to Keating (and transcribed by her) by YouTube previously, and presumably represent an update to the contract’s terms. Read More

Startup Ditto aims to help customers customers to find the right pair of eyeglasses. With that in mind, it recently launched a new “Netflix for designer eyewear” program called Endless Eyewear. Subscribers pay a monthly fee, choose a pair of glasses for delivery, then if they don’t like the pair or get tired of it, they can swap them out for anytime you want, with free shipping and returns. There’s one plan for sunglasses, and another for prescription glasses — and yes, the prescription program includes new lenses each time. The company says Endless Eyewear offers more than 50 brands, including Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Burberry. It also includes insurance for scratches and wear-and-tear. Co-founder and CEO Kate Doerksen told me via email that she got this idea from her constant conversations with Ditto customers: One storyline I heard over and over was what we started to call the “one and done” dilemma, meaning people could only afford one pair even though they wanted multiple s...

Apple has taken another step toward turning iWork into a service anyone can take advantage of, similar to Google’s web-based productivity suite. The company made its iWork for iCloud apps available to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have any Apple hardware, so long as they have or sign up for an Apple ID. So far, that’s only available via the public iCloud Beta, but presumably if all goes well with the test that will roll out to the standard version of iCloud after that. The web-based versions of Apple’s iWork suite are surprisingly complete, and also manage to keep getting better, thanks to updates that have brought features like interactive charts and a much better user interface to the platform since its introduction back in 2013. iWork used to be a paid productivity suite that Apple sold first via boxed copies then via the Mac App Store. Today, it completes the transition from revenue source to value-add service for iWork, with a web version that serves as a taste ...

Apple, in its flush of new, bigger iPhone 6 handsets, has been selling record numbers of its older and newer model smartphones in the last few months, and now it’s passed another significant milestone: it has managed to overtake sales of Android devices in the key market of the U.S. for the first time in three years. According to figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the market research division of WPP, in the key holiday sales quarter of Q4 2014, Apple sold more iPhones than all of the various Android OEMs put together, the first time that it has managed to do this since Q4 2012. But if you don’t want to buy into any Apple hype, you might consider there’s likely some margin for error here — iOS devices accounted for 47.7% of sales, while Android devices accounted for 47.6%. The more interesting question is whether this was a seasonal bump or the start of a bigger trend. On that front, Kantar is bullish on Apple’s overall lineup that includes older models, especially in co...

Security researcher Mark Burnett released a torrent of 10 million passwords and usernames, a trove of comparatively anonymized data that he sourced from open websites from around the web. The passwords and usernames are older and most probably dead and, most importantly, Burnett sourced them from websites that were “generally available to anyone and discoverable via search engines in a plaintext (unhashed and unencrypted) format and therefore already widely available to those with an intent to defraud or gained unauthorized access to computer systems.” Why did he do it? Password behaviors are opaque. No one knows why we choose certain passwords over others nor do they have any way of assessing the relative strength of passwords on the web. While corporations like to say their password databases are secure, how do we know? And how can they be secure when the most popular password is “password?” Burnett writes: Frequently I get requests from students and security researchers to...

Google today launched PerfKit, an open-source cloud-benchmarking tool that, in Google’s words, is an “effort to define a canonical set of benchmarks to measure and compare cloud offerings.” The PerfKit tools currently support Google’s own Compute Engine, Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure clouds. Google says it has worked on this project with over 30 researchers, companies and customers, including ARM, Canonical, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Rackspace and Red Hat. As Google points out in today’s announcement, evaluating the performance of different cloud services isn’t easy. There are a few companies like CloudHarmony that offer cloud-performance reports (and tools like New Relic obviously let you monitor your existing installs), but none of these take your specific needs into account, and it’s often unclear how those tests were performed. Once installed, PerfKit runs about 20 benchmark tests that look at everything from raw CPU performance to more complex database and network ben...

Another acquisition for Yelp that will take the local listings company even deeper into commerce and food-related services. It’s gobbling up Eat24, a U.S. food delivery business that competes with GrubHub, Delivery.com and others in the area of delivering food on behalf of various restaurants. Yelp is paying $134 million for Eat24, with $75 million in cash and the rest in Yelp shares, for the company. The thinking is that this acquisition should help Yelp in two areas. First of all, it will give the company more contact points with restaurants. And second of all, it will help the company shore up its core listings business with another revenue stream. In the first of these, Yelp already provides users with local listings for restaurants that they might want to visit. It also gives them the option of booking tables at those restaurants (by way of a 2013 acquisition of SeatMe), and it offers deals at those venues. Now it will give users the option of eschewing the restaurant exper...

Major wireless carriers in the US have promised to unlock customers' phones or tablets once they've paid off their contracts, beginning today. This is the result of an agreement the carriers made with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in late 2013; the deadline to comply with all portions of the agreement arrived today. The two key provisions are as follows: Postpaid Unlocking Policy. Carriers, upon request, will unlock mobile wireless devices or provide the necessary information to unlock their devices for their customers and former customers in good standing and individual owners of eligible devices after the fulfillment of the applicable postpaid service contract, device financing plan, or payment of applicable early termination fee. Prepaid Unlocking Policy. Carriers, upon request, will unlock prepaid mobile wireless devices no later than one year after initial activation, consistent with reasonable time, payment or usage requirements. Carriers must also post unlocking po...

Zomato, the restaurant discovery site that acquired U.S. rival Urbanspoon last month, is expanding its business into food orders, starting in its home market of India next month. The company plans to launch a new service letting customers across India order food directly from its platform on March 16 with an initial 2,000 restaurant partners. Zomato CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal told TechCrunch that he expects to reach 10,000 supported restaurants nationwide within a few months of the service’s debut. “We have a sales team of around 300 in India and 5,000-odd advertisers… these partners know the volume we bring to them so it is quite easy for us to launch this [new service],” he said. Zomato is currently testing the service among its 500 staff in India and a handful of restaurants. The Gurgaon-based company has raised over $110 million to date — including a recent $60 million round — largely to fuel an acquisition-led international expansion, and $50 million has been allo...

Facebook’s Internet.org project to provide basic mobile Internet services for free just took its biggest step to date after it launched in India. The service, which is run by Internet.org with input from a number of telecom industry partners, has thus far been available in a handful of African countries and Colombia, but now it is making its way to India’s billion-plus population. The app isn’t available to the full Indian population yet, since Facebook partnered with operator Reliance to offer free access to Internet.org sites in an initial six states: Tamil Nadu, Mahararashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, and Telangana. That’s the first step on a path to “provide Internet access to more than a billion people in India who aren’t yet connected,” Facebook said in a statement. “Most” of the services on Internet.org are available in English and six local languages — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi — and they can be accessed via the dedicated Android app...

It’s Safer Internet Day  today and while you are probably not celebrating the occasion with an overpriced prix fixe dinner and roses, it’s not a bad time to remember that hacks don’t only happen to big media organizations. To give you a bit of extra motivation to check on your security settings in Google, the company is giving away 2GB of permanent Drive space to anybody who goes through its Security Checkup within the next week. I just went through the process and it’s pretty straightforward (or as a Google spokesperson told me, “my mom could understand this – and that’s often not true with online security!”). While working your way through the wizard, you’ll check your recovery information, recent activity, account permissions and passwords, as well as your two-factor authentication settings. Chances are, everything will look pretty clean, but I ended up revoking access to my accounts from a couple of applications I hadn’t used for more than a year, for example. Once you...

Prezi’s online presentation software already offers a popular alternative to creating otherwise tedious and visually uninspiring PowerPoint presentations, but now it seems the startup wants in on the consumer ‘video’ sharing trend. Taking the same dynamic zooming tech used to spruce up Prezi presentations, the company has created a new app called Nutshell. Simply put, the iOS app lets you take three photos in succession, overlay text and graphics, and turn the result into a short ‘movie’ sequence. Essentially, it’s a way of injecting motion into photos taken on your phone. Or, perhaps, another way to think of it is the ‘Ken Burns effect’ — zooming and panning — that we’ve all become accustomed to in apps like Apple’s iPhoto, but taken up a couple of notches. In fact, Prezi says the idea for Nutshell came about after the startup realised that people were using Prezi’s “zoom-able presentation canvas” for sharing events like birthdays, road trips, and even marriage proposals, appar...

Facebook on Tuesday announced the addition of a new feature for Facebook Groups designed to make it easier for members of a “For Sale” group to list their items. The new “Sell” feature, which is now starting to roll out globally to more groups, will allow members to create a post where you can add a description of the item for sale, set a price and set a pick-up or delivery location. The social network today already hosts tens of millions of groups based around a variety of interests, and “For Sale” groups are one of the most popular categories. In these groups, members use Facebook as an alternative to something like Craigslist for local selling, or as an alternative to eBay for selling collectibles or other items of broad interest, like books or electronics. Currently, members in these “For Sale” groups generally post photos and text descriptions of their items, but the addition of the “Sell” feature will make filling out the necessary information a bit more structured than be...

Software giant Microsoft is in the process of trying to reinvent itself, and part of that reinvention evidently involves acquiring startups that have created products that compete with its own. The latest acquisition is calendar app maker Sunrise, which Microsoft shelled out at least $100 million for according to our sources. Sunrise has a suite of calendar products for mobile and desktop users that connects with and consolidates calendars from different providers. It’s available on the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and on the Mac App Store, as well as offering a web client. Users can access their calendars from Google, iCloud, and Microsoft Exchange, as well as connecting to a wide range of other third-party apps. That cross-device and cross-platform support has helped it gain significant traction among users. The purchase furthers Microsoft’s push into supporting the platforms of rival technology firms. Microsoft made waves when it released a touch-friendly version of O...

Twitter has a bit of a security problem. Taylor Swift, Chipotle, Newsweek — it seems each day brings another hijacked account or two. Today’s latest slip-up: Twitter’s own CFO, Anthony Noto. For about 20 minutes this morning, Noto’s account was blasting out a massive torrent of spam. It looks like the account was hijacked somewhere around 11:10 a.m. PT and recovered by 11:30. In that stretch, nearly 300 spam tweets were sent to some of Noto’s 13,000 followers. Twitter has yet to comment on how the account might have been taken over. Given that it was used for spam rather than a political message, it’s possible that this wasn’t a targeted attack, instead relying on something like an old, forgotten API key left behind on a leaky third-party service. It’s perhaps a bit revealing, though; if the company can’t keep the account of one of its own top executives locked down, what about its other 288 million active users? Note: URLs were obscured in the screenshot above to blur l...

Bunkr is a French startup that keeps reinventing itself. After making a big splash by promising the PowerPoint killer we’ve all been waiting for and struggling to raise a seed round, it is now starting from scratch again and rethinking from the ground up its presentation service. Bunkr now takes advantage of everything that the web has to offer to provide features that don’t even exist in PowerPoint. This is a comeback story in the making for a startup that has a big product ambition and wants to make things right. “Ever since we closed our seed round, we’ve spent a lot of time under the radar,” co-founder and CEO Alexis Jamet told me in a phone interview. “We had to take some very difficult decisions for a startup, but they were all necessary if we wanted to survive.” First, Bunkr now has a new CTO, Thomas Meson. Second, Bunkr had become a crippled code base with features that didn’t properly represent the vision of the company. The service wasn’t scalable, and my first post ...