Relax, nothing has changed with Android’s Google Wallet in-app payments

March 9, 2012 7:30 AM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

Shockingly (note the sarcasm), Google seems hell-bent on making its Google Wallets platform the de facto standard for Android in-app payments.

A blistering Reuters report from yesterday claimed that Google was forcing developers to adopt its payments platform, in lieu …

Biologic offers strangest way yet to browse social networks on iPad

March 8, 2012 5:06 PM Jennifer Van Grove
Jennifer Van Grove

Bored with the mundane, linear way of reading status updates? Fire up the iPad and load Biologic, a brand new app for browsing social network feeds.

Biologic, which comes from the creative minds at data science startup Bloom Studio, is …

Rumored Instagram funding may boost its valuation from $25M to $500M

March 8, 2012 4:49 PM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

Mobile photography application Instagram may be raising a $40 million round of funding, rocketing its valuation from $25 million to $500 million overnight.

The Wall Street Journal’s sources say that venture capitalists are definitely interested in the popular young company, …

Path launches version 2.1 with open API, new camera and music functions

March 8, 2012 12:36 PM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

Social network Path has opened its API today, but don’t get excited yet developers. It’s only open to Nike for now, which Path partnered with to create “Step Out.”

“Step Out” allows you to connect your Nike Run application with …

Loyalty startup CrowdTwist grows revenue 3200% with Sony & Pepsi as clients

March 8, 2012 12:24 PM Ben Popper
Ben Popper

Consumer loyalty platform CrowdTwist, one of the graduates from TechStars NY’s first class, has announced a huge revenue growth of 3,200 percent year over year.

CEO Irving Fain once complained to me that his company didn’t get much screen time …

Zaarly swaps anonymity for identity in refreshed mobile marketplace

March 8, 2012 12:00 PM Jennifer Van Grove
Jennifer Van Grove

Editor's Pick

With the rise of mobile marketplaces, outsourcing tedious or mundane tasks to a willing gopher has never been easier. Thursday, one startup seeks to make these mobile conveniences less intimidating for the masses.

Zaarly, one year after making a splash …

Mozilla and Yahoo over-promise on mobile

March 8, 2012 10:00 AM Anthony Franco

Guest Post

Mozilla unveiled a plan last week to build a better mobile platform, attempting to leverage its expertise in Web browsers to compete with Android’s and iOS’ giant 77% market share. The program, dubbed “Boot to Gecko” and announced at the …

Highlight’s new features help you find — and remember — more people at SXSW

March 8, 2012 8:00 AM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

Highlight, the location-based app stripping the serendipity out of meeting someone, is launching new features today inspired by the popular upcoming event South-By-South-West.

“South-By-South-West is kind of a preview of what the world would be like if everyone had Highlight,” …

DOJ may sue Apple and others for e-book price fixing

March 8, 2012 7:54 AM Tom Cheredar
Tom Cheredar

The world’s most valuable company, Apple, is being accused of conspiring with five major book publishers to raise the price of e-books, which could lead to a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The antitrust case deals with Apple’s …

Apple switches from Google to OpenStreetMap in new iPhoto…but forgets to give credit

March 8, 2012 7:30 AM Ben Popper
Ben Popper

As we reported recently, since Google raised the price to access its maps API, a lot of companies have switched to OpenStreetMap when adding geo-data into their services. Now it seems like Apple has joined the club, using OSM in …

NFC mobile payments to hit $74B by 2015, says Juniper

March 8, 2012 7:11 AM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

Near-field communications (NFC) payments are off to a slow start here in the U.S., but Juniper Research believes that they will reach a whopping $74 billion by 2015, and in the process will help to spur on the mobile payments …

Add 1GB of RAM to the new iPad’s killer specs

March 8, 2012 6:31 AM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

Along with an ultra-high resolution Retina Display, quad-core graphics, and LTE, Apple’s new iPad may also feature a major memory upgrade of 1 gigabyte of RAM, sources tell the Verge.

Apple has actively avoided playing too much of a specification …

Flockthere tracks your friends; tells you if they’ll be late for dinner

March 8, 2012 6:00 AM Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff

A new location tracking app for Android and iOS called Flockthere has just announced the launch of its public beta.

“My co-founder, Sanjeev and I were determined to start a company and we’d meet at different locations several times per …

Chartbeat moves past the pageview with redesign focused on engagement

March 8, 2012 4:58 AM Ben Popper
Ben Popper

As a struggling Chartbeat addict, I can tell you that watching the number of people flooding onto your site or story can be a rush. But like any great high, it fades too fast, especially when you can’t figure out …

Facebook’s tips for getting your mobile game noticed

March 7, 2012 5:30 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Mobile games are so plentiful that discovering the right one has become a nightmare. But Facebook believes that it has a solution in layering its own social network on mobile gaming platforms such as the iPhone and Android. By making …

Want to pretend your iPhone 4S is 4G? Just install iOS 5.1

March 7, 2012 1:41 PM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

If you’ve been dreaming of having a 4G iPhone, your wish can be granted today… sort of.

Coinciding with the launch of its new iPad, Apple has also released iOS 5.1 for existing devices. As expected, it adds Japanese language …

What the new 4G iPad (and cheaper iPad 2) means for business

March 7, 2012 1:03 PM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

Apple’s new iPad was announced just hours ago, and while rumors might have spoiled the surprises, businesses that are considering the iPad will no doubt like what they see from today’s event.

A surprising amount of companies are using iPads, …

Heyzap launches mobile API to add high-level analytics

March 7, 2012 1:00 PM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

Heyzap is launching a new applications programming interface (API) for its development tools for its social mobile gaming network that will deliver a lot more data on game usage.

The new Heyzap API will give developers access to data gathered …

iPhoto is finally available on the iPad

March 7, 2012 12:58 PM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

Apple released a line of new iLife applications for the iPad today, including a brand-new photo-editing app called iPhoto.

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t create on an iPad,” said Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller at …