Runtastic Releases Scary, Exciting “Story Running” To Encourage Your Ploddings

Runtastic, an Austrian running start-up with an aim of hitting the Polars and Nikes of the world where it counts has released something its calling “Story Running,” essentially an app that tracks your run and replays an audio story that becomes more exciting as you approach the high points of an interval run.

There have been a few of these already, most notably Zombies Run! and, unless you're ensconced in a long audiobook they do add a bit of aural pleasure to the long slog of keeping ourselves out of an early grave. There are a number of genres including “Fantasy,” “Adventure,” and “Travel.”

Runtastic also announced the Libra scale, a BMI, bone mass, muscle mass, and BMR/AMR calculating scale that connects to an iOS device to track your weight and important statistics. It costs 129 Euro and will be available in November.

Circle Raises $9M Series A From Accel And General Catalyst To Make Bitcoins Mainstream

Circle Internet Financial has launched with $9M of Series A funding to increase mainstream adoption of digital currencies like Bitcoin by providing a payment platform for consumers and merchants. Investors include Jim Breyer, Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners.

All three invested in Circle founder Jeremy Allaire's previous startup Brightcove, an online video platform that went public in 2012.

Circle is a payment platform that wants to make it easy for businesses and consumers to use Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Despite its association with Deep Web black market Silk Road, as well as concerns over its stability, more consumers and companies are beginning to show interest in Bitcoins because they can facilitate online payments at lower costs and with greater security and privacy than existing electronic payment methods.

For consumers, Circle says it is building a secure platform that will protect consumer privacy. For businesses and charities, it will provide tools and services that enable them to accept digital currency payments with no transaction fees. One potential draw for enterprise users is avoiding the fees and risks of fraud and chargebacks associated with credit cards.



Circle's Series A is one of the largest–if not the largest–amounts of funding secured so far by a digital currency startup. Other Bitcoin-based companies that have recently landed significant investment include Coinbase, which raised a $5 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures, and BitPay, which has received about $2.5 million to date from Founders Fund and various angel investors.

Other startups that have recently launched to take advantage of the increasing interest in Bitcoin include London-based Bitcoin exchange Coinfloor; music jukebox hack Beatcoin; micropayment platform BitWall; and whitelabel exchange Buttercoin.

In order for companies like Circle to be successful, however, they will have to allay concerns about regulatory issues. As Shakil Khan, founder of Bitcoin news Web site CoinDesk, pointed out last week during a Disrupt Berlin panel, average customers want to see some kind of regulation before they adopt Bitcoin. On the other hand, there are potential opportunities for digital currency companies around the world. For example, China's government is beginning to show interest in Bitcoins (and a division of Chinese Internet giant Baidu recently started accepting Bitcoin payments).

Circle is based in Boston, with international operations headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is regulated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury, as a money transmitter and is seeking state licenses. John Beccia, the former chief regulatory counsel for the Financial Services Roundtable in Washington, D.C., will also serve as Circle's general counsel and chief compliance officer.

Allaire also co-founded of Allaire Corporation, creators of Web development language ColdFusion. Allaire Corp. was acquired by Macromedia in 2001, where Allaire became CTO and helped oversee the creation of a Flash-based application platform.

“Bitcoin and digital currency represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the future of the Internet and global commerce,” said Alliare in a statement. “There's a tremendous opportunity to make payments easier, more secure and less costly for consumers and businesses. Digital currency can dramatically reduce the friction and costs currently experienced in the world by merchants and consumers.”

Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners, will join Circle's board of directors, as well as David Orfao of General Catalyst Partners.

“The dramatic global growth in mobile, social and online commerce is creating the need and potential for a real global digital currency. With Jeremy's vision for Circle and track record as an Internet pioneer, the opportunity here is to potentially build a significant global company,” said Breyer.

Nomorerack Raises $40M In Series B Financing To Build Depth Across Its Biggest Categories

Less than one year after completing a $12 million Series A round, the multi-category retailer Nomorerack has raised $40 million in Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners and HTV Industries. Although the company launched as a flash sales site in 2010, Nomorerack has since transitioned to position itself as an online retailer that offers deep discounts across the board in numerous categories.

The financing will go toward customer acquisition and building out the depth of its top categories, which include jewelry, apparel, electronics, home and lifestyle.

“At the end of the day, when we advertise on [sites like] MSN, the broader we are, the more appealing we are,” CEO Deepak Agarwal said.

The company did $9 million in revenue in 2011, north of $100 million in 2012, and is now on track to do close to $300 million, Agarwal said. It's profitable, and about 70 percent of sales are repeat purchases from consumers. They are currently seeing around 5 million monthly unique visitors to the site.

The site started off featuring sets of nine items that would stay live for 24 hours before they were swapped out for another batch. Today, there are more than 3,000 deals available at any given time, curated by a 16-person buying team, many of which are live for months at a time. How long any given product remains available on the site is determined by an algorithm on the backend that takes into account revenue and sales volume.

“It started out as a daily deal and then over time has evolved to have deep breadth and depth. A lot of products do not get removed from the site. Whereas before, when we launched, they would only last for 24 hours.”

The site is able to offer discounts to consumers by buying directly from manufacturers and disrupting the typical retail pricing chain.

Agarwal said that while Nomorerack is taking market share away from brick-and-mortar stores like TJ Maxx, Target and Walmart, their consumers are shopping on similar sites like eBay and Amazon.

The site recently launched a full-scale jewelry boutique, a mechanism for building depth that they would like to apply to apparel and home, as well. The manufacturing chains for apparel and jewelry are especially ripe for disruption, Agarwal said, as there is a particularly high discrepancy between the manufacture cost and retail price of both. It's not dissimilar to the recent push Amazon has made in the fashion category.

Home, the site's biggest category, currently accounts for 30 percent of sales dollars, with electronics coming in second and fashion in third.

Acquiring customers is the company's biggest expense, Agarwal said. The team is largely based on display advertising, with about 80 percent of marketing dollars going in that direction. That means advertising on sites like AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and Google, as well as running national television commercials, which Agarwal described as an effective driver for them.

Image: Flickr

SoundTracking Launches Updated App With New ‘Discover' Section For Trending Music

Music-focused social network SoundTracking released a new version of its smartphone app today, one that co-founder and CEO Steve Jang said will make the app useful beyond “hardcore music lovers.”

We're also hearing that SoundTracking has reached an agreement with Sprint, with SoundTracking being preloaded or featured on certain Sprint Android phones starting next spring. However, Jang declined to comment on any potential partnership, so hopefully we'll know more about that soon.

Anyway, back to the updated app. There's a new design with features like larger photos and brighter colors, but the most interesting addition is probably a Discover section, which is basically a new take on finding music through Soundtracking.

Previously, people discover music based on what was shared by the users they followed. With the new section, you can find music in a way that's not subject to the randomness of who you follow and when you checked your newsfeed. There's a song of the day chosen by the SoundTracking team (something the company was already experimenting with via email, and which got a positive response), hashtag-based search, and charts of general trending music and music nearby.

Jang said he plans to go further in this direction with more charts focusing on different types of music.

The obvious comparison seems to be Twitter #Music, an app that recommends music based on what people are tweeting. Jang suggested that social networks in general have moved toward personalized recommendations that less reliant on timelines and on who you follow. On the other hand, a recent report suggested that usage of the #Music app has declined and that Twitter may shut it down. The problem in that case, Jang suggested, is that people wanted that experience in Twitter itself, not in a separate app.

Jang added that 14 million tweets, Facebook status updates, Instagram pictures, Foursquare check ins, emails, and SMS messages are sent each day from SoundTracking. Users have created a total of 40 million music moments, which have been shared more than 6 billion times and viewed 530 million times within the company's mobile and web apps.

“The stats reflect that we continue to create a product that's' really great for expression, sharing, and outbound messaging,” he said. “I think our work on the Discover section and charts and personalized is really going to address the other side. … Now we need to help people who love music that are little bit more passive, more of viewing and listening type.”

” So we can expect more “lean back” type experiences to come in the future.

Ask A VC: AngelPad's Thomas Korte On NYC Expansion, The Incubator's New $7M Funding Round And More

In this week's special episode of Ask A VC from Disrupt Europe in Berlin, Germany, AngelPad founder and former Googler Thomas Korte talked to TechCrunch about his incubator's strategy, expansion and more.

Korte, who launched AngelPad in 2010 with six other ex-Google employees, explained why he's kept the incubator small, with only around 10-12 startups per session (with two sessions per year). Korte also told us that AngelPad is heading east for its next session, debuting a new session in New York City (interested founders can apply here, and the deadline is Sunday).

While AngelPad was bootstrapped for the past three years with the backing of its founders, Korte also revealed that AngelPad just raised $7 million in outside investment from undisclosed LPs.

As of January of this year, AngelPad had seen 62 companies participate in five sessions. In 2012 alone, AngelPad's 62 total companies raised $56 million, which is on top of the $25 million they had raised in 2011. The incubator has also seen some impressive exits from portfolio startups, including Twitter's recent $350 million acquisition of MoPub.

Tune in above for more!

Oracle, Red Hat, And Google Employees Pitch In To Fix Beleaguered Healthcare.gov, Reports Indicate

Workers from tech giants Google, Red Hat, and Oracle have reportedly joined with the govenrment to help fix the notoriously broken Healthcare.gov website, that is a key portion of the Affordable Care Act.

According a tweet from CNBC, “experts” from the firms have been dispatched. It is not clear yet in what quantity, and what their role will be. The government needs the help, and it is good to see the technology community step up. After all, this is our domain.

This is a breaking story. Refresh for updates.

Google's Search Results Can Deep-Link To Your Android Apps (If You Have A Nexus 5)

It should be clear by now that there's much more at play in Android 4.4 KitKat that some early reports alluded to, and one of the most interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits managed to escape the early leak treatment.

Tucked away toward the tail-end of Google's Nexus 5/KitKat presentation was a mention of a feature called App Indexing that should get companies (and the Android app developers that work for them) a little worked up. That's because Google has worked up a way to deep-link to the contents of an app from within a user's Google search results with a feature it calls App Indexing.

Here's how it works. Let's say for instance that you're using KitKat's Google Search app to dig up some dirt on that Ender's Game movie that doesn't look very good. If you happen to have the IMDb app installed on your device while you search, you'll be treated to an info card in that results stream that includes an “Open in app” button. Give it a quick tap and the IMDb app will spring to life and immediately direct you to its Ender's Game listing.

Naturally, the feature isn't just limited to showing off movie details - so far the full list of supporters includes Allthecooks, AllTrails, Beautylish, Etsy, Expedia, Flixster, Healthtap, IMDB, Moviefone, Newegg (yes!), OpenTable, and Trulia.

The way Google sees it, the move is all about providing these companies with a choice. If they think their mobile interfaces are enough to keep users engaged, they can simple go about their business. But if they already have an Android app (or are in the process of building one) that can do a better job of engaging with its users, a little extra work to implement those deep links may be well worth it.

It's not hard to look at this a move to bolster Android app development either. Google's Sundar Pichai said very pointedly today that KitKat is meant to be a version of Android that reaches “the next billion people” because of its improved memory management and decreased OS overhead. That means that with any luck, huge swaths of the global Android community will be searching for stuff within KitKat and seeing those deep-linked “Open in app” buttons when they've got the right apps installed. Tell me that's not a compelling reason for a company to develop an Android app if they haven't already.

Despite the buy-in from all those app partners, I'd wager it'll be some time before the feature starts seeing more widespread support. Pichai noted that the ability to deep link within apps is one that has been built into the Nexus 5′s launcher itself, though another Googler was quick to exclaim that the feature would ultimately find its way into all KitKat-powered devices at some point.

Google's Nexus 5 Is Now Real And Ships Today At $349 For 16GB, $399 For 32GB

At long last, Google has officially announced what has been perhaps their worst kept secret in a while: the Nexus 5.

The Nexus 5 had seen more than its fair share of early outs, with everything from fleeting, "accidental" appearances in the hands of Google employees in quickly-deleted promo videos to full-blown product pages going up on the Google Play store ahead of time.

The Nexus 5 will be the first device to ship with Android 4.4 (codenamed "KitKat" through a suprising collaboration with Nestlé and Hershey), which they first announced back in early September. Other devices, like the Nexus 4, 7, and 10, will be getting 4.4 in “the coming weeks”.

The new Nexus comes with two color variants: one black, one white. The 16GB LTE model will cost you $349, while the 32GB LTE model will set you back $399. Both devices are unlocked, and will go up for sale later today.

While Google's Nexus line mainly exists to provide people a direct route to an unlocked, higher-end device, the Nexus 5 will have a few features that'll be exclusive at first. It'll be the first device with Google's "HDR+" mode, their company's new in-house approach to HDR, which takes multiple shots in rapid succession and combines the best parts of each into one photo. It'll also be the first with Google's new homescreen launcher, which brings Google Search to every page of your homescreen and allows you to trigger a search at any time by saying "Ok, Google".

Here's what we know so far about the innards:

• Display: 4.95" 1920×1080 HD Display (445 ppi)


• CPU: 2.26 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800


• Front Camera: 1.3MP


• Rear Camera: 8.0MP with Optical Image Stabilization (read: a gyroscope built into the lens that tries to counteract any shaking)


• Storage: 16 GB or 32 GB internal storage


• GPU: Adreno 330 running at 450 Mhz


• RAM: 2GB


• WiFi:/strong> 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac


• Battery: 2300mAh (w/ an estimated talk time of around 17 hours, or 8.5 hours of WiFi usage)

We're just about to run off and spend some time with the device, so check back in just a bit for our hands-on pics and early impressions!

Amazon Launches AWS SDK For JavaScript In The Browser

Amazon today launched the developer preview of its AWS SDK for JavaScript. With this, developers can now easily build dynamic JavaScript applications that can access AWS services from the browser without the need to write any server-side code and to configure an application server for hosting.

Amazon previously launched an SDK for Node.js apps, so this isn't Amazon's first foray into supporting JavaScript. Indeed, it turns out that this new SDK uses the same programming model in the browser and in server-side Node.js code.

With this new SDK, developers can make direct calls to Amazon's S3 storage services, Amazon SQS for reading from and writing to message queues, SNS for generating and processing mobile notifications and to Amazon's DynamoDB NoSQL database. Access to Amazon's more traditional database services is not currently an option. This means developers can now build JavaScript apps that can create and popular S3 buckets, for example, and query DynamoDB tables without the need to access these services through any server-side code.

To access these features, developers need to add a tag that integrate's Amazon's JavaScript library into their code. The SDK supports Amazon's web identity federation feature (you wouldn't want to add your AWS credentials in your HTML and JavaScript, after all). By doing this, you can also use a public identity provider like Facebook, Google or – of course – Amazon itself.

As with all things Amazon, the setup isn't completely trivial, but the company has created a number of tutorials that will get you started.

Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs

Hey, squishy human, ready to be imprisoned and forced to buff robot parts to a high shine by hand until your body and soul are destroyed? I bet you are! Today in TIDWRTWHUFOO we present the robot that will build the prison and the robot that will play you to your death.

First there's a machine that does Countour Crafting and can 3D print a house in 20 hours. The system, built by USC Prof Behrokh Khoshnevis and his team, extrudes concrete in clever shapes which then harden to form an impregnable shell of sadness and woe. Remember: the robots won't 3D-print doors!

Next we have the iRobot 110 FirstLook, a throwable scout robot used by armies to search rooms for danger. The robot has been given a set of arms it can use to defuse bombs… or lay bombs. The Throwbot can drop from a 16-foot roof and keep running and it includes a manipulator arm and new sensors to help in bomb detection… or bomb making.

Finally, this is cute little Bo from i-Play is playing Beethoven's 9th using a cute little hammer and xylophone. Imagine this robot just a little bit bigger and a little bit meaner and replace the hammer with a bigger hammer and the xylophone with your family and you get an idea of where these robots are headed. I, for one, welcome our robotic musician overlords.

Twitter Introduces Fine Tuning Options To MagicRecs Recommendations Via DM

Twitter did an interesting thing this morning with its @magicrecs recommendation service. It introduced a text-based menu system that you access via DM, which lets you tune the recommendations that you get via push notification or message.

The new system has you DM the @magicrecs account with a ‘hi' or ‘hello', and presents you with a few actions. The basic ones are these:

• tweets on/off


• users on/off


• help

These allow you to toggle the recommendations of tweets which the MagicRecs system deems noteworthy. Generally by velocity of and network relationship ti the re-tweets from people you follow. You can also toggle off the user recommendations, which tell you when a bunch of people you interact with follow an account.

You're also prompted to give feedback on the service:

• Provide feedback:


• good


• bad

Twitter's bot says that this will help them improve the MagicRecs service. Earlier this year, Twitter began experimenting with MagicRecs as a Twitter account which gave DM tips on interesting accounts or tweets. It was later folded into the product itself as a push notification that can be toggled on or off.

This new DM menu feature allows you to fine-tune the recommendations that you get in at least a couple of small ways. If a lot of people use it, I wouldn't be too surprised to see an option to turn tweets or users on or off appear inside the Twitter apps themselves.

Image Credit: John Greenaway/Flickr CC

FightMe Raises $500K To Bring Its Social Video Competitions To The US

FightMe, a social video app with what may be my favorite startup name ever, is announcing that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding from an undisclosed London investor.

Using a hashtag system, app users can post their own 30-second, unedited videos, and they can also browse other videos and post their own footage in response. Other users then “applaud” the videos that they like, and the videos with the most applause rise to the top. The most popular videos right now (which are showcased on the FightMe home page) include some pretty amazing footage of someone making successfully making a basketball shot while also flipping into a swimming pool.

The company was founded by Jamie Lorenz (who also founded the London music venue The Cuckoo Club) and Joelle Hadfield (former head of PR for social network Lulu). There are plenty of other services for sharing videos, and they often with a strong social component, but Lorenz argued that FightMe's competitions may spur more people to participate.

“I play the guitar and do a few other things [that could be featured in videos], but I would never showcase any of the things that I've learned on YouTube or Facebook, because it's too much about myself,” he said. “This is a different way for people to showcase their talent in a way that isn't, ‘Hey, look at me.'”

Since launching in July, Lorenz and Hadfield said they've focused on building a community in the United Kingdom (the company is based in London), so they were surprised to see that 48 percent of their audience already comes from the United States. They added that one of the site's strengths is “urban” performance like beatboxing, rapping, and spoken word, while stretching to include things like parkour.

With the new funding, FightMe is taking the beta label off the app and starting to plan for more expansion in the US - Lorenz said he's already been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles, so that doesn't necessarily mean opening a US office right away.

As for making money, Lorenz and Hadfield said they're looking at a number of possibilities. For one thing, they pointed out that competitions could be a good opportunity for brand advertisers.

You can download the FightMe app here.

This Week On The TC Europe Podcast: What We Learned From Disrupt Europe, And Coinfloor

Our European podcast this week mainly focuses on what we liked at Disrupt Europe. Marc Samwer opened the show in a rare public appearance, trying to respond to some of the accusations against the Samwer brothers. The fireside chat with Tinder founder and CEO Sean Rad, Box's Aaron Levie interview, and the Bitcoin panel were also highlights.

Talking about Bitcoin, also happening this week, Coinfloor launched a new Bitcoin exchange focused on complying with any current and future financial regulatory rules.

This is the TechCrunch Europe Podcast, wherein we European writers discuss tech news, as well as what's happening in our startup scene. Join Steve O'Hear, Natasha Lomas, Darrell Etherington, and Romain Dillet to hear what we think about those topics.

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcast every Thursday.

Download an MP3 of this show

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Intro music by Espanto.

HowAboutWe Internationalizes Its Dating App, Goes Entirely Free In 30+ Countries

HowAboutWe, a startup that recommends date activities for both singles and couples, is launching the first internationalized versions of its iOS app.

The company bills itself as “the first offline dating site” because of its emphasis on real-world activities. Beyond the obvious dating site features (browsing profiles, sending messages to set up dates), HowAboutWe offers the ability to post local date ideas, to browse ideas from others, and to see who's online nearby.

Head of PR Jade Clark told me via email that the HowAboutWe already has international users, but the app was only available in English, limiting its growth outside the United States. Now it's available in 15 new languages covering more than 30 countries, including Japan, France, and Russia.

The company says it's also making all features in the app available for free to international users, in contrast to the US, where premium features like unlimited membership can cost between $8 and $35 per month. Asked why HowAboutWe is taking this approach, Clark said the first step is “to extend our reach as a brand and to hit critical mass in one of these new markets,” and then to look at monetization options.

HowAboutWe Dating (that's the singles product) has 1.7 million users in the US, while there are half a million HowAboutWe for Couples users in four markets, the company says. When asked about mobile and international plans for the couples product, Clark said, “Yes, we're working to expand our mobile offerings and have some big announcements tied to this planned for Q1 .”

Co-founder and CEO Aaron Schildkrout has also to put together a blog post with his team about “10 Things You Need to Know Before Internationalizing Your App.” Many of those items are pretty technical (“All of your translatable copy should be stored in strings”) but some are more general - for example, he talks about the challenge of languages that require “grammatical differences for men and women”.

His final point: “It will always take 3x longer than you think!”

58.com, The “Craigslist of China,” Goes Public On The New York Stock Exchange

58.com, the online classifieds marketplace often referred to as the “Craigslist of China,” will hold its initial public offering of 11 million American Depository Shares (ADS) at $17 each on the New York Stock Exchange today. The shares will be listed under the ticker “WUBA.”

Hurst Lin, general partner of DCM, 58.com's lead investor, tells me that the company will use proceeds from its IPO to focus on product development, especially mobile apps, and launch more verticals. Products that have proven especially successful for 58.com include short-term job classifieds for blue collar workers. The company plans on developing location-based mobile apps for those listings in order to quickly connect job searchers with nearby opportunities. 58.com was founded in 2005 and booked $107 million in sales during the twelve-months ending in June 2013.

Other Chinese tech companies that plan to hold U.S. IPOs this year include Qunar, a travel Web site owned by Baidu, which wants to raise up to $155 million when it goes public on NASDAQ this week, as well as sports lottery site 500.com and app developer Sungy Mobile, which want to raise $150 million and $80 million, respectively.

E-commerce giant Alibaba might also opt for a U.S. listing in an IPO that could potentially value the company at an impressive $75 billion. Alibaba had originally planned to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but reportedly decided not to because the HKSE's rules prohibit dual classes of stock and other corporate structures that would make it easier for minority shareholders to hold onto control of a company.

If Alibaba does indeed pursue a U.S. IPO, it may lead the way for other Chinese companies to return to U.S. stock exchanges.

Between 2009 and 2011, 67 Chinese companies went public in the U.S., raising a combined $8.26 billion, according to Dealogic. But the appetite for U.S. listings was hurt by falling stock prices and a U.S.-China regulatory dispute that lead to concerns Chinese companies would be delisted. Since 2011, only five Chinese companies have had a U.S. IPO.

These include tech companies LightInTheBox, which had a successful debut on the New York Stock Exchange in June and online retailer VipShop, which went public in March 2012.

VEVO Relaunches Its Web And Mobile Sites To Streamline Music Video Search And Discovery

Music video powerhouse VEVO is launching a major redesign this week, after rebuilding its back end from the ground up. The online music video site has undergone a complete overhaul, which you can see here, designed to make it easier for users to browse and discover new content, while also streamlining the ability to search for the videos that they want to watch.

The new VEVO, which goes live Friday, is an extension of the company's continued iteration on its web, mobile, and connected TV platforms. With this launch, the VEVO team has done a lot of work to actually simplify the user interface and strip out some of the clutter that had been in previous versions. At the same time, it's setting the stage for VEVO to do some more interesting things around content discovery and personalization.

The new web site is designed to be cleaner, faster, and dynamic, so viewers can tune in via desktop, smartphone, or tablet, and it automatically fits the screen. Now viewers who go to VEVO TV will have a simplified nav bar with just a few options: VEVO TV, Search, and Browse.

On the homepage, in addition to the carousel of videos, there's also now a feed of regularly updated content that goes beyond its usual daily feed. By featuring new videos regularly, the hope is to draw the user in and get viewers watching videos more quickly.

“We wanted to simplify things to get people watching videos right away. As we started thinking about engagement, there's now a sense of urgency… There's always something new coming up,” SVP of Product & Technology Michael Cerda told me.

In addition to updating the homepage, VEVO has also expanded its VEVO TV live music feed. Launched in May, VEVO TV is designed to evoke the same feeling of that old “music television” - you know, from back when it actually played music. But it's mean to be streamed rather than just delivered via cable.

Now instead of a single VEVO TV channel, VEVO will have three channels of videos. VEVO's “Pop” channel will take over as the main feed, providing a live broadcast of all the most popular music videos today. It's also introducing two new channels - Country and R&B/Rap - to provide viewers with access to continuous, linear programming of music from both of those genres.

While the most obvious changes might be on the VEVO homepage, the more important work went on under the hood. When it first launched, VEVO had been built on a Microsoft .NET stack. But according to Cerda, the team has quietly moved its backend to a Node.js framework.

It's also refined and rebuilt its API, which will help VEVO extend its content to new partners, and also make it easier for the company to build experiences for new platforms.

Given all the changes behind the scenes, Cerda called it the most significant update that the company has ever done. The company started building the new experience in the late winter, rebuilding the backend from the ground up. The first step was building the web and mobile web sites, but the new backend will speed up its ability to reach new devices and update apps on existing platforms.

For instance, the company just rolled out a new experience on Samsung Smart TVs and is currently working on apps that work with Google's $35 Chromecast streaming dongle. Once that's done, viewers will have the AirPlay-like ability to send videos from its mobile apps for iOS and Android straight to their TV.

Apple Looking Into Practical Solar Charging For Notebooks, iOS Devices

A new patent application published by the USPTO this week (via AppleInsider) indicates that Apple has been thinking about how to practically deliver the benefits of solar power to mobile devices, without requiring clumsy and gigantic external converters. Solar charging is still fairly fringe when it comes to the general gadget-using population, but Apple's patent, filed originally in 2012, looks like it could provide a way to make getting your power from the sun something that's generally palatable within a few years' time.

The system in Apple's patent is a power management array for accepting both power adapter and solar power direct from gathering devices or traditional mains-based chargers. So in other words, you could plug in your MagSafe or iPad/iPod adapter, or alternatively hook a MacBook or other piece of hardware directly to a solar panel with a simple cord. There's also a means for accepting both inputs at the same time, according to the patent, for a power balance that would likely charge your device quicker but with more economical use of juice from the grid.

The key to this patent is that the system described is both composed of readily available power management techniques achievable with existing hardware, and; able to be built using componentry that takes up very little space, making it theoretically possible to integrate it into existing device designs without much modification. Both of those indicate that Apple could build this into products sooner, rather than later, should it choose to go that route.

I'd still expect this to take a while to come to fruition, if it does at all, but it is one way that Apple could explore the possibility of expanding device battery life in non-traditional usage situations, like while out and about in nature and separated from any mains access. The key will be whether this can be done without making any sacrifices to battery or device size, and that seems to be where Apple is focusing its R&D efforts around solar, according to this application at least.

Nexus 5 Launch Likely Coming Today, Here's What We Know So Far

Google's Nexus 5 is not a real thing yet, but at this point it's a foregone conclusion; Google will update its Android reference smartphone, which comes with the clean stock version of its mobile operating system, and it'll probably do it today. Which is why it makes perfect sense that the leaks are now flying fast and furious.

The Nexus 5 will reportedly be unveiled later today, sometime around 8 AM PST according to a report from GottaBeMobile, and it'll begin shipping tomorrow, November 1 with orders starting immediately. Whether or not it happens right at that time, the case remains that we're probably going to see the phone today at some point, since a number of earlier reports also indicated Oct. 31 as the time for its official debut.

Google's Nexus 5 is likely sourced from hardware partner LG, just like the Nexus 4, and it is said to have a 4.95-inch, 1080p display, with a Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz, 2GB of RAM, 16 or 32 GB of storage, an 8 megapixel rear camera/1.3 megapixel front, and Android 4.4 KitKat. It'll likely be the first KitKat device, which is a software update that brings a lot of refinements, along with replacing the stock SMS app with Google Hangouts now that it has SMS integration, we're hearing.

According to one T-Mobile employee, the Nexus 5 will be available at that carrier the same day it's announced, and will cost roughly the same as the Nexus 4 did on T-Mo last year (which is to say, at a considerable markup). Google has also updated the look and design of the Play Devices web store, prompting some to note that this could be in preparation for a Nexus 5 listing.

Google's Nexus 5 seems like it'll be a match for the current crop of top Android smartphones, at least on paper, and it's a handsome device if early render and photo leaks are to be believed. Price and international availability remain the biggest question marks at this point, as well as the exact timing of availability, but we'll be sure to bring you more as soon as we get any official info from Google.

Hardware Alley At Disrupt Europe 2013: Connected Home, Connected Car And More

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe 2013 wrapped up in Berlin yesterday, but the show lives on in memory, and in video. Here's a look at the companies that took part in our Hardware Alley exhibition, including some familiar to TechCrunch readers like Tado and Occipital Labs.

There's also a company that wants to put electrical vehicle chargers in every lightpost, and one that makes a Fitbit for delivery and other industrial/commercial drivers. And a car that was maybe 3D printed? I still can't really figure it out. But I sat in it, whatever it was.

Overall, Disrupt Europe had some of the most impressive and fully-formed hardware and gadgets I've ever witnessed at a Hardware Alley exhibition, and I think it's telling that we also had a hardware startup (Lock8) win the Disrupt Europe 2013 Startup Battlefield. Europe's got gadget fever, and the only cure is more hardware startups.

Highlights From The Disrupt Europe 2013 Hackathon

This past weekend, we brought together 500 of Berlin's finest coders, designers, and builders for our first ever Disrupt Europe Hackathon. Teams had to slam together the best thing they could build from the ground up in just 24 hours, with $5,000, a chance to present your project in the main Disrupt Europe conference, and tons of other prizes up for grabs.

Couldn't make it? It's okay - there will be another one. In the mean time, TCTV has put together a lil' video to show to give you a sense of the energy, exhaustion, and raw talent involved with an event like this.

While the judges had to pick just three winners, we were absolutely blown away by all of the projects - so much so, in fact, that we ended up giving tickets to Disrupt Europe to every single team that presented (we originally planned on giving tickets to the Top 40 or 50 teams, but there were just too many projects that we all liked.)

Want to peruse all of the awesome submissions? You can check out the full submission gallery here.

After Nearly 5 Years And 5M Backers, Kickstarter Gets A New CEO As Two Founders Step Back

As it approaches its fifth birthday, Kickstarter's star continues to rise, as the indie crowdfunding goliath announced yesterday that five million people have now collectively pledged nearly one billion dollars to its crowdfunding projects.

Today, in a somewhat surprising turn after yesterday's milestones, it appears that an impromptu version of the “Management Shuffle” will be rolling into Kickstarter. In a blog post today, Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen announced that he will be stepping down from his role as CEO and will instead assume the role of chairman beginning January 1st.

Chen explained that the move will give him more time to pursue his own creative projects: “I'm looking forward to stepping away from the day-to-day to consider our path from a new perspective … [and] I'm also looking forward to having time to work on creative projects of my own, after all these years working on an engine to support them.”

But Chen isn't the only co-founder to depart as part of the company's management shuffle. Charles Adler, who “has long been itching to move with his family back to Chicago,” is also planning to leave his day-to-day role at the company and will assume the role of an adviser.

In Kickstarter's version of the management dance (we're still waiting for the music), when two co-founders step back, one must step forward. With Chen and Adler set to depart, Yancey Strickler, who has held a number of roles within the company, with community, communications and customer service among them, will be taking the reins as Kickstarter's second CEO.

Considering that its leadership has remained largely unchanged over the years, the Management Shuffle represents a significant change for Kickstarter. Usually, when companies undergo signficant changes to its founding leadership team, it's not a good sign. These kind of moves always produce speculation and a few worried looks, but Chen assured readers in his post today that the move shouldn't have any impact on the company itself - or its mission.

In fact, Kickstarter PR Chief Justin Kazmark tells us that Chen plans to stay involved, both in company projects and by supporting Yancey in his transition to CEO. Instead, by assuming the role of Chairman, Chen is looking to use the position to gain a new perspective on the company's trajectory and plans to spend a significant chunk of time focusing on the big picture and keeping Kickstarter close to its core mission.

In fact, Union Square Ventures co-founder and early Kickstarter investor Fred Wilson sees Chen's fingerprints all over the impromptu management shuffle. Reflecting on the changes in a blog post today, Wilson quipped, “like all things that involve Kickstarter, this is a classic Perry move.”

The company and its CEO have always marched to their own drummer, and Kickstarter's Management Shuffle is yet another example of this freewheeling mentality, Wilson explains. While its expected that the company's investors would look to temper speculation and air on the side of its founders, Kickstarter has given them plenty of very legitimate reasons to do so. To illustrate the point, Wilson described the long-time CEO as an entrepreneur that was very “wary of taking money from VCs … and had no intention of taking the company public and no intention of selling it,” and was determined to put creators first.

Although he was initially skeptical of the founder's motivations, they decided to invest anyway. Over time, the investor said that Chen ended up proving him wrong, and his perspective ultimately led to just as much, if not more, value creation - a model which remains in place today:

Four and a half years after launch, Kickstarter is a very important and sustainable business. It will continue to grow, it will continue to fund creativity, and it will continue to do things its own way. Kickstarter was built in Perry's mold and the unique culture and mission of the Company are derived from him. I suspect his decision to step up to Chairman and allow the team to run the business day to day is Perry's way of saying to the team that they have his confidence to lead Kickstarter into the future. Kickstarter will always be Perry's work and we are very happy to be a part of it and be inspired by it every day.

For more, find Wilson's post here and Chen's announcement on the Kickstarter blog here.

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe In 1,337 Photos

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe was a hit. Thousands of attendees, founders, and venture capitalists from around the world filled Arena Berlin for the event. Startups from more than 80 countries exhibited their wares. 15 startups launched in the first Startup Battlefield held in Europe and Lock8 won the $50,000 prize and Disrupt Cup. Disrupt Europe was something special. It was alive. It was vibrant, energetic, and rousing. Words cannot describe the electric pulse of this conference, parties and the hackathon. But perhaps the hundreds of photos and videos below can.

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Tesla Officially Opens West Coast Supercharger Circuit, Covering San Diego To Vancouver

Tesla's West Coast Superhcarger Corridor opened today, making it possible for owners of the Model S to travel free between San Diego and Vancouver, using Highway 101 and Interstate 5. This makes a Supercharger reachable within 200 miles to over 99 percent of Californians and 87 percent of those in Oregon and Washington.

A lot of attention has been paid to Tesla's efforts to make a coast-to-coast trip in one of its vehicles a reality, via Superchargers and other charging stations, but blanketing the West Coast means that Tesla S owners can now travel from essentially the Mexican border to within the Canadian one without paying any money to fill their cars, and with a minimal amount of charging time required. Superchargers can charge a Tesla S to a capacity worth around 200 miles of driving distance in just 30 minutes, and the stations apre positioned near restaurants and shopping centers to give you something to do while your car powers up.

To promote the new corridor, Tesla is having two Model S vehicles make the trip from San Diego to Vancouver, and they'll be pushing updates to their various social media properties along the way. Spoiler alert: those cars are definitely going to make it without incident.

Supercharger rollout continues globally, with Tesla announcing plans in September to cover 100 percent of the population of Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark and Luxembourg, and 90 percent of the population in England, Wales, and Sweden with a station within 320 kms by the end of 2014. Getting past that basic excuse of “I can't buy one, there's nowhere to charge” is clearly a huge part of the company's global rollout strategy, which is why each of these Supercharger network expansions is a big win for Tesla and for founder Elon Musk.

Lawdingo Raises $690K More To Help You Talk To Lawyers Instantly

Y Combinator-incubated legal startup Lawdingo is announcing that it has raised another $690,000 in funding.

The company's goal is to make it more convenient and affordable for users to connect with a lawyer (in contrast to a service like LegalZoom, which offers legal forms rather than actual consultation with an attorney). Users can search the site and browse profiles based on a lawyer's location and expertise, then schedule an appointment or talk to them right then.

Founder and CEO Nikhil Nirmel said one of the more popular features, which was added since I last wrote about the company, is the ability to “get a call now” - Lawdingo can instantly connect users with a relevant lawyer by phone. Lawyers provide Lawdingo with their availability, so when a request comes in, the system reaches out to the ones who are available and have relevant expertise until it finds one who's free to talk.

Nirmel added that this is an efficient way for lawyers to find new clients. They're available for these conversations because lawyers “don't operate as much on a strict appointment schedule … Unless they're in court, they can still take client calls.”

The business model has also been tweaked, with Lawdingo abandoning a plan where lawyers bid to promote their listings. The company has since gone back to the flat subscription fee that it started out with.

Lawdingo now has lawyers in every state, with the biggest concentration in California, New York, and Massachusetts (Nirmel said there are more than 200 lawyers listed in each of those states). To address the challenge of managing supply and demand in different categories, he said his team built a feature that will automatically spend more money in targeted advertising when the site needs to attract more clients in a given area.

Speaking of advertising, Lawdingo also produced the tongue-in-cheek marketing video that I've embedded below. Nirmel said his aim is to “lighten up the legal industry,” which he said “takes itself too seriously - they're a service provider like everyone else.”

Nirmal participated in the Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator program earlier this year but has since moved to New York. Lawdingo's 15-person team remains distributed in multiple locations, with Nirmal using tools like GitHub and Skype to manage everyone. When pressed on whether this is actually an effective way to run a company, he replied, “Truthfully, I don't know how large it can scale, but for now, I think it works well.”

The new funding comes from angel investors (and funds run by angel investors) including Nathaniel Stevens, Kartik Hosanagar, Gene Alston, Altair Capital, Atsany Captial, and Andrew Moroz. It brings Lawdingo's total funding to $850,000.

Analytics Startup Mixpanel Expands Into Mobile Surveys

Mobile-focused analytics company Mixpanel is growing its offerings today with the launch of Mixpanel Surveys, a product that allows developers to integrate user surveys into their mobile apps.

Currently, co-founder Suhail Doshi said the options “kind of suck” for developers who want to find out more about what their users think. Usually, they end up emailing a giant list of user addresses, an approach that isn't particularly well-targeted and doesn't necessarily result in many responses.

With Mixpanel Surveys, the questions can be integrated into the app itself, so users are being surveyed in a context where it's relevant, which should lead to “conversion rates that are much higher,” Doshi said. He gave me a quick demo of the editor, and it took only a few minutes to create a survey that looked like it was a native part of the app.

The surveys that Doshi created only had one question per screen, and he said that mobile surveys really shouldn't be longer than a few questions. Nonetheless, Doshi argued that the results can still be quite meaningful, especially when paired with Mixpanel's audience segmentation capabilities. For example, if a developer wanted to know if level 10 of their game was too easy, too difficult, or just right, that's a one-question survey that could be targeted specifically at players who just finished that level.

When I asked whether other companies couldn't do the same thing, Doshi replied that the makers of most survey products aren't “mobile first”:

The technology that you're asking about, it's not so much that SurveyMonkey couldn't go and build this UI, but I don't think they have the DNA to go and build it. They don't have the design DNA and the mobile DNA. That takes a long time to build.

One specific technical challenge that Doshi said Mixpanel has solved is the ability to integrate these surveys “at scale” while minimizing any effect on the performance of the mobile apps in question.

He also argued that surveys are a “natural, tangential” area for Mixpanel to move into, and something that many of the company's current customers have already expressed interest in. The existing analytics product helps developers understand how their users behave and how much money they're worth to the business, but with surveys, Mixpanel can also “help companies measure how people think and feel about things.”

Runnable Raises $2M Seed Round To Expand Its “YouTube Of Code”

Runnable, a recently launched Palo Alto-based startup that aims to make it easy to discover and reuse code snippets, today announced that it has raised a $2 million seed round led by Sierra Ventures with additional investments from Resolute VC, AngelPad and 500 Startups. Hiten Shah, the founder of KISSmetrics and Isaac Roth, the founder of Makara, also participated in this round.

The service, which launched with about 1,000 code snippets for popular programming languages and APIs, plans to use this new influx of cash to onboard the companies that are currently waiting to bring code snippets for their APIs, libraries and SDKs onto the site.

Since its launch about four weeks ago, the team told me, it has now gotten requests from over 150 companies that want to add their code to its library. The idea behind the service is to turn it into a “YouTube of code.” Currently, the company argues, developers spend a lot of time searching for code snippets, but there is no single site where they can easily find them.

What makes Runnable so cool is that, in addition to finding these code snippets, you can also edit and run them right in the browser. To do this, the team just spins up a virtual machine to run the code in a few seconds and then destroys it when you're done.

Right now, Runnable is still monitoring all the code submissions to the site. Over time, the company plans to open its service up to any developer or company. Runnable hopes that, as it becomes more popular, it will become the go-to site for any company or open source project that wants to get coders to use their tools. It bootstrapped this process by adding lots of snippets from PHP, Node.js, Ruby and other popular languages. Now, it will start adding snippets from new projects as it brings on these new partners.

Amazon Wants To Do Good With Its Goods, Launches ‘AmazonSmile' Charity Donation Program

At the beginning of the year, just after Amazon reported a big profit dip for Q4 2012, Slate business correspondent Matthew Yglesias posited (with tongue planted in cheek) that Amazon was “a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pointedly dismissed that observation in his following shareholder letter, but today one has to wonder if the charity implication didn't have some sort of lasting impact on the company. That's because Amazon has just rolled out a new initiative called AmazonSmile, which will see the e-commerce titan automatically donate 0.5 percent of all eligible purchases to a U.S. charity of the buyer's choosing. And to top it all off, there's no upper limit to the amount Amazon will give away.

The high-level message is clear: Amazon wants people to know it cares about people and communities. But there's an underlying message that seems just as apparent: we'll keep giving as long as you keep buying.

Let's consider the brass tacks. Starting today, interested users can mosey on over to smile.amazon.com, at which point they're prompted to select a charity for the proceeds of each transaction to go to (naturally, you can change your mind at any time). Amazon says there are nearly a million charities available to choose from, with recipients ranging from prominent projects like charity:water to much more local, grassroots affairs. A quick search for my hometown for instance revealed that I could indirectly donate to the Bahais Of Cherry Hill Township, the local fire department, or (my personal favorite) the Friends of the Cherry Hill Free Public Library.

Once all that's done, it's essentially the exact same shopping experience, complete with Prime shipping if you've already shelled out for it. AmazonSmile GM Ian McAllister said that “tens of millions of items” are eligible for the program but there are some notable exceptions. Auto-renewed subscription purchases don't fall under the AmazonSmile umbrella, and neither do digital products like mp3s, video content, and Kindle books (“for now,” anyway). And this isn't just a temporary move meant to reflect the spirit of the upcoming holiday season either - McAllister confirmed that the company intends for the program to be around for the long haul.

To hear him tell it, there was no specific moment of inspiration or event that prompted Amazon's brass to venture down this charitable road, just a desire to build things the company thinks its customers will “love”. Love, suffice it to say, is a curious thing in business. Apple aficionados love their Apple products to the point of waiting in line for days, and BlackBerry fans are among the most ardent and vocal I've ever seen in spite of waning fortunes. And if Amazon can entice a larger swath of people to love it because of this new charitable angle, the company won't be seeing hearts as much as it sees dollar signs.

The upsides here are obvious. With only a fraction of a fraction of each transaction being passed along to charities, Amazon still stands to make gobs of money, especially if this program manages to lift sales volumes in any appreciable way. And you can bet that Amazon is going to play up this charitable angle over time, a move that should only endear users to the process of buying their, well, everythings from the massive e-tailer.

After all, the very thrust of this initiative is to make sure that end users like you and I won't see any functional difference between plain ol' Amazon and AmazonSmile - why wouldn't we donate to charity if doing so didn't impact us in any appreciable way? What are we, a bunch of jerks? And then there are the potential tax implications to consider too. You as a user won't be able to claim these donations the next time you fill out your taxes, as they're all being made on behalf of a foundation established by Amazon. In short, if Amazon plays its cards right, it stands to make plenty of money by giving a ton of it away.

Cloud-Based Device Management Startup Soluto Acquired By Device Insurers Asurion For Up To $130M

Looks like another exit for an Israel-based startup - this one straddling the worlds of cloud services and hardware control. Soluto, a service that lets users manage PCs and other connected devices remotely, has been acquired by Asurion, a company that offers device insurance services. The news is being reported as a work in progress by TheMarker Calcalist. Globes, meanwhile, is reporting this as a done deal. And we have confirmed the sale has been closed by two separate sources. We're hearing reports of up to $130 million, specifically between $100 million and $130 million.

Soluto - which first had its debut at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 in the Startup Battlefield, which it won - started out life as a cloud-based platform that let ordinary people help each other with managing their own and other people's devices. Tomer Dvir, the CEO and co-founder, has told me that one of the driving ideas behind creating the service was to help his mother with her computer when he was not near her. “I can help her set up and run Skype, Spotify, whatever,” he said.

That initial consumer and specific PC focus helped the company with getting an early critical mass for its service. Today the company has clocked more than 3 million downloads of its product, and over 15 million “actions” carried out through its platform.

More recently the company has expanded to include other connected devices beyond PCs such as smartphones and tablets; and it has expanded into enterprise services - such as its SMB-focused products, launched in April of this year.

This has signalled a more formal approach to the kinds of device management you tend to associate with business services - mobile device management; hardware inventory; patch management; boot shortener; remote access, and so on. It has still continued to keep its focus on simplicity - taking a cue from the wider consumerization trend that has been so strong in the enterprise sector. “Ready to enjoy being the IT guy?” the site's homepage asks visitors.

You can see where a deal with Asurion makes a lot of sense. The company partners with carriers like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Clear to resell its services to consumers. Those services include physical replacement of broken devices - consumers can file and track claims - but there are also a suite of services that are software based such as the ability to locate lost devices and back up content. Soluto will help Asurion extend and improve the latter part of the service, perhaps as a way also to offset some of the insurance risk around losing and replacing faulty or broken handsets.

More to come.

Baidu Reports Q3 2013 Revenue Growth of 42.3%, Net Profit Up 1.2%, But Mobile Monetization Still Lags Behind PC

Chinese search giant Baidu reported strong revenue growth in Q3 2013, but it is still investing aggressively in its mobile business, which continues to lag behind PC in terms of monetization.

Baidu's total revenues in Q3 2013 were RMB 8.892 billion ($1.453 billion), a 42.3% increase year-on-year. Operating profit in Q3 2013 was RMB 3.338 billion ($545.4 million), a 1.2% increase from a year ago. Net income was RMB 3.048 billion ($498 million), a 1.3% increase from the corresponding period.

Earnings per ADS were RMB 8.63 ($1.41). Baidu currently has RMB 43.3 billion in cash and short-term investments.

The company said it expects total revenue in Q4 2013 to be between RMB 9.22 billion and RMB 9.48 billion, a 45.5% to 49.6% increase year-over-year.

In Baidu's earnings call, Jennifer Li, Baidu's chief financial officer, said that Baidu's main expenses in Q3 2013 were related to the merging streaming video platforms PPS with iQiyi and the acquisition of app marketplace 91 Wireless, as well as increase in research and development costs and advertising for mobile.

Selling, general and administrative expenses were RMB 1.384 billion ($226.2 million), up 115.4% from the corresponding period in 2012, primarily due to promotional expenses for mobile products. Research and development expenses were RMB 1.091 billion ($178.2 million), a 77.5% increase from the corresponding period in 2012, due to the hiring of more R&D personnel.

Baidu's CEO Robin Li said that the revenue growth in Q3 2013 shows that the company's investment in mobile is on a solid trajectory. But mobile monetization still lags behind Baidu's PC business.

“Mobile monetization has been growing very quickly over the past couple of quarters. Yes, it's not reaching the level of PC monetization yet. We certainly see the gap is quickly closing, but exactly when it will catch up is another question. Right now we think the highest priority is still to provide the best user experience so they will spend on the Baidu search app to get information and services,” said Li.

In the next few quarters, Baidu will continue invest aggressively in its mobile products, said CFO Li.

“We have our foot on the pedal to marketing. We're aggressively promoting our mobile products. The install rate for our core search app is growing 50% quarter per quarter and we will continue to use different channels to build our product's presence,” she said.

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Apple: ‘Limited' Number Of iPhone 5s' Have Manufacturing Flaw Leading To Low Battery Life

Apple released a statement today to The New York Times noting that a manufacturing issue has caused shortened battery life in a ‘very limited' number of iPhone 5s devices. At its introduction, the phone was reported by Apple to have nearly identical life to the iPhone 5, and most tests have borne that out with reviewers seeing identical or slightly improved numbers.

The statement, issued by an Apple spokesperson, indicates that a small number of the iPhones that Apple has sold so far are defective. Here's the statement given to the Times:

"We recently discovered a manufacturing issue affecting a very limited number of iPhone 5S devices that could cause the battery to take longer to charge or result in reduced battery life," said Teresa Brewer, an Apple spokeswoman. "We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone."

The Times says that Apple's statement ‘implies' that this is only a few thousand devices. Apple sold 9 million iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 4s devices in its launch weekend in September.

iPhones do not have user replaceable batteries, making the life of those batteries of paramount importance. In general, iPhones get comparable battery life to other devices in the same size and thickness. Other devices from Motorola, Samsung and more have made design decisions that allow them to get greater battery life by packing in larger or thicker battery packs.

If that reputation for decent, if not exhilarating, battery life is going to be maintained, Apple will want to make sure that they clamp down on this issue quick.

Trulia Reports $40.3 Million In Q3 Revenue, Net Income Of $7 Million

Online real estate market Trulia has been a public company for just over a year now, and it's already seen its share of ups and downs as it dukes it out with competing players like Zillow.

The company just dropped its fiscal Q3 2013 earnings (with additional color on Twitter, as usual) - the combined company posted $40.3 million in revenue for the quarter, along with net income of $7 million which works out to earnings of $0.19 per share.

Wait, combined company? Let's not forget that Trulia acquired Market Leader earlier this year, and this is the first time that Trulia has included its acquisition's figures into the fold. And as always, those Wall Street analyst types couldn't keep themselves from projecting: in the days leading up to the release, the analyst consensus as per Yahoo! Finance was for the company to report $37.9 million in quarterly revenue and earnings of about $0.08 per share.

That looks like a pretty solid beat at first glance, but if you strip out Market Leader's fiscal contributions you're left with a total of $33.8 million in revenue generated by Trulia's core business. Still, when you figure that Trulia's marketplace place revenue nearly doubled year-over-year and its media revenue was up 56 percent, it's pretty clear that Trulia is picking up momentum in a big way. Shareholders seem to agree so far, too - at time of publication, Trulia's stock price is up almost 5.5 percent from today's closing position.

Considering that Trulia's entire business model is predicated on getting people to use their site and mobile apps, traffic is always a big concern. We're seeing some big lifts there too though, as Trulia.com saw 35.3 million uniques this past quarter (up 42 percent from this time last year) while quarterly mobile uniques surged 88 percent year-over-year to 14.5 million.

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Yelp Beats The Street As Revenue Jumps 68% To $61M, Tempered By An EPS Loss Of $0.04

Yelp, the local online business and restaurant guide that has become the Web's go-to resource for reviews of local businesses since launching in 2004, announced its 2013 third quarter earnings after the market closed this afternoon. For the second straight quarter, the company beat expectations, with revenue coming in at $61.2 million in the third quarter and a per-share loss of $0.04.

Considering Yelp posted a greater-than-expected loss of $2.3 million, it wasn't a categorical victory, but it was a win nonetheless, with revenue increasing 80 percent from the same period in 2012, while cumulative reviews grew 42 percent year-over-year to over 47.3 million, average unique visitors grew 41 percent year-over-year and local business accounts grew 61 percent to 57,000.

Wall Street expected Yelp to announce a loss of $0.01 per share on revenue of $59.40 million for the quarter. Yelp passed muster in revenues, but saw an uptick in its net losses in the third quarter of $2.3 million, or $0.04 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.0 million in the third quarter of 2012.

Thanks to a fairly consistent performance in recent quarters and solid progress from its local ads business, Yelp's stock price has increased 180 percent over the last six months. This is a strong signal that investor confidence has indeed returned for Yelp, even if many believe that the market is a little too bullish on the company at the moment.

The company's stock price had been hovering around $68 per share on Tuesday, but is down slightly in after hours trading.

Reflecting on his company's third quarter performance, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman highlighted the company's renewed focus on its mobile experience as a driving source of growth, along with the launch of the Yelp Platform in July, which allows local businesses to interact directly with customers via its portal. The company also saw continuing growth in its unique user base over the last quarter, which now stands at 117 million.

Stoppelman said in the company's statement today that Yelp …

Saw another quarter of strong momentum thanks to the high-quality, authentic content contributed by Yelpers around the world … Our focus on connecting consumers with great local businesses continues to drive our success. In the third quarter, we improved the user experience by adding the ability to write and post reviews from mobile and launched new features such as the customer activity feed for business owners. Looking to the rest of the year and beyond, we are well positioned to capture the large local opportunity ahead of us through our innovation around mobile, geographic expansion and closing the loop with local businesses.

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Other than that, after adjustments, Yelp's EBTIDA came in at $8.1 million for the third quarter, compared to $2.2 million for same quarter in 2012. The company showed 46 percent of its advertisements on mobile devices in Q3, which was an increase from the prior quarter, but will need to be stronger going forward, considering companies in its class, like Facebook, have seen significant spikes in mobile revenue.

Comparatively, Yelp's 46 percent is only a 6 percent improvement on its second-quarter figure, which is important considering the company doesn't break out mobile revenue as many other companies do, instead limiting its report to mobile advertising share. Nonetheless, it's mobile ad business has seen consistent growth of late, and the company has been taking steps to improve its mobile experience, like finally giving users the ability to post reviews from its apps, for example.

Yelp's cash position grew slightly over the last three months, increasing by about $5 million to $101 million in cash and equivalents in Q3. Its acquisition of SeatMe in early July for $12.7 million was announced at the time, but recorded as part of this quarter's financial statements.

All in all, Yelp booked a fairly solid performance in the third quarter, just beating expectations, keeping firm hold of its cash, while growing traffic and moving up and to the left in key performance metrics. The company has been expanding aggressively overseas, which from the reports today, appears to be proceeding as expected, without putting too much of a squeeze on capital.

During the third quarter, Yelp took its first steps into Latin America, for example, beginning with Brazil. Yelp will likely look to Brazil to act as a gateway to the region, helping it to secure a foothold in Latin America. Looking forward, the company will likely begin accelerating its international expansion over the next six months. While this could be a drain on profits in the short-term, Yelp could see significant gains in local ad revenues in the long run as it launches in new markets.

Yelp has been turning in solid quarters of late, but it must be said that, when compared to its generation of tech companies (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn among them), Yelp still has some catching up to do.