Parmy Olson's Blog, page 58

Here Are 13 Apps We Couldn't Live Without In 2013

It’s been an important year for apps, those chicklet-sized, colorful squares on your smartphone, not just because the companies behind them continued to command multi-billion dollar valuations, but because of their increasing impact on offline life. A few years ago, the apps we couldn’t live without were casually addictive games that created a small black hole in our daily commute. Now apps are playing the role of match-maker (Tinder), or helping us lose weight and keep it off (MyFitnessPal) or acting the part of digital concierge when it’s late and we really need a cab (Uber). As we rely on apps more and more, the Big Data plumbing behind them is helping marketers and advertisers get a better idea, for better or worse, of who we are.

Apple's Deal With China Mobile Means Millions More iPhone Sales

has spent the last six years trying to ink a carrier deal with , and for good reason: the state-backed carrier is the biggest in the world with 760 million wireless customers, more than double the population of the United States. For Apple to truly get a foothold in China, it needed China Mobile. On Sunday, the company announced it had finally entered a multi-year contract to sell its iPhone through China Mobile, representing what may be CEO Tim Cook’s most important breakthrough in China.

Watch Out, Facebook: WhatsApp Climbs Past 400 Million Active Users

WhatsApp, the mobile messaging service that sends free texts, photos, videos and audio messages, now has more than 400 million people using the service on a monthly basis, the startup revealed Thursday. That’s a rapid escalation from the 350 million active users it announced in October and easily makes it the largest, cross-platform mobile messaging service in the world.

Startup Meta Challenges Google Glass With Sleek, $3,000 Smart Glasses

Glass has raised the profile of glasses as a new form factor for computing, and in its wake has come a raft of startups with their own interpretations how of computers could sit on the bridge of your nose. One of the most ambitious is Meta, a Silicon Valley startup that aims to outdo Google on two fronts: its technology uses gesture recognition to let you manipulate the digital objects the glasses show in front of you, using augmented reality. It also want to avoid turning its early adopters into geeky, "glassholes," designing its device to  look as stylish as your average pair of sunglasses.

As Instagram Adds Messaging, Teen Chat Sensation Kik Goes A Step Further - Becoming A Browser

On the same day Instagram announced it was getting into messaging with its Direct feature, Kik, a popular messaging app among the world’s mobile-hungry teens said it had reached the 100-million-registered-users milestone. The free, HTML 5-based platform is growing quickly in terms of features to challenge similar apps like LINE, WeChat and now Instagram too. But something else is happening behind the scenes: Kik is quietly evolving into a browser.

Security Firm AVG Launches First Service To Block Mobile Location Tracking

It’s well known that advertisers track our browsing histories on the web to better target us with ads, but they’re increasingly moving towards tracking our locations too, because the history of your physical movements can be just as valuable to an advertiser as your virtual ones. Now security firm AVG Technologies is challenging that business model with a free smartphone app that blocks WiFi location tracking, even borrowing the “Do Not Track” movement label to name the "DNT" feature it's adding to its PrivacyFix app for Android.

FTC May Target More Mobile Apps For Secretly Passing Your Data To Advertisers

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission announced its first wrist-slap and settlement with a mobile app developer for secretly funneling data on tens of millions of its users to ad networks. The regulators accused Moscow-based Goldenshores Technologies, which created an Android flashlight app to generally strong reviews, of collecting location data and device numbers even after asking users if they wanted to opt out. The FTC has told Goldenshores to delete the personal data it collected and readily inform users from now one of how their data was being used.

Nest Saw 'Tens Of Thousands' Of Its Smart Smoke Alarms Come Online Within Two Weeks

For all the hype surrounding Nest Labs, the smart home products maker that ships the Learning Thermostat and Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector is also seeing some substantial sales. Nest has seen ‘tens of thousands’ of the Protect detectors come online after it began shipping to the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom less than two weeks ago, CEO Tony Fadell said in an interview. Nest launched the Protect on Oct. 8 for $129.

Meet The First Flexible Smartphone From LG

The moment you’ve all been waiting for it here — possibly. LG Electronics has rolled out what it says is the first mobile device that can be bent out of shape or pressed flat onto a desk.

Interview: Yuri Milner On The Rise Of Xiaomi And Celebrity Scientists

For the last few years, Russia's Yuri Milner has been the investor any Silicon Valley startup worth its salt wants to hook up with. He was one of the first, major backers of Facebook in 2009 and has since steered investments in a handful of late-stage Internet giants like Groupon, Spotify and AirBNB through DST Global, the investment fund he manages. Having led a reported $400 million funding round in Twitter in 2011, DST’s stake is estimated to have been worth $1.2 billion at the time of the company’s IPO in November. Milner himself has also piled money into a string of early-stage companies, including 23andMe, Genapsys and Coursera.