Yesterday, Josh wrote about how Spotify is planning to push out a browser-based version of its music streaming service. Earlier today AllThingsD further confirmed this and added a bit more color: the price is not likely to be reduced at the same time; and it will start rolling out in about a month. We’ve heard a similar report of an October timeframe from a source. And now, in addition to that we have also seen some evidence of how Spotify could be planning to enhance its mobile app as well, by adding its third-party apps service into the mix.
Currently, Spotify’s desktop app offers a specific section where they show off third-party applications that use the company’s API — for example, a TuneWiki app gives you lyrics to Spotify tracks; LastFM offers personalized recommendations. But there is no link to Spotify third-party apps at the moment in the iOS app.
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If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that the next iPhone is right around the corner. Apple has sent out invites to a September 12 event — that’s on Wednesday, by the way — just as we’ve long expected.
The event is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which just so happens to be located right next to the hotel we’re staying at for Disrupt (Hackathon begins today, by the way). In proper Apple fashion, the company has already begun preparation for the announcement event, hanging a massive Apple banner outside of the huge event center. → Read More
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Tandem Capital, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that focuses exclusively on early-stage mobile businesses, is today revealing the six companies that are participating in its most recent batch. The seed fund and accelerator raised its second, $32 million fund in June, which it uses to offer $200K convertible notes (in exchange for 10 percent equity) to the startups participating in its accelerator. Like other accelerators, Tandem works closely with its startups on everything from strategy to product design and marketing, offers free work space and daily meeting. → Read More
So Amazon launched a new publishing program called Kindle Serials yesterday, but it’s not the only company with serialized fiction on its mind. In fact, three of the eight Kindle Serials launch titles were created in collaboration with a new startup called Plympton.
The company was founded by Jennifer 8 Lee (former New York Times reporter, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles) and Yael Goldstein Love (author of em>The Passion of Tasha Darsky). → Read More
Motorola unveiled the new RAZR family at a big media gala in early September. The company proudly rolled out the supercharged RAZR HD and RAZR HD MAXX. The $99 RAZR M stole the show. The 4.3-inch RAZR M LTE packs a lot of the same goods as its larger counterparts. For just $99. And the M is available now as the others will be released later this fall. Here’s the thing: this is Motorola’s best answer to the iPhone yet.
Apple will introduce the new iPhone next week. It will likely sell for the bargain price of $199, pushing the current model, the iPhone 4S, down to just $99. The 4S still has one of the best cameras, and consumers love Apple’s iOS ecosystem. At just $99, the iPhone 4S will dominate most budget Android handsets. That’s why the RAZR M is available now and why it stands a chance. This is a great phone at a great price. → Read More
What do you do after you spend years working on very serious, infrastructure problems supporting Gmail and literally hundreds of millions of users globally?
You build a drawing app. Or at least that’s what Gabor Cselle did after he stopped being an Android and Gmail product manager, following an acquisition into Google two years ago. He and co-founder Jeremy Orlow had been working on Gmail and Chrome respectively.
“We just wanted to do something fun. Something that would make our friends smile and feel really lightweight,” Cselle said. “This is the simplest idea that we could come up with. We literally were just like: What is something that will delight people?”
So they created DrawChat. → Read More
It would appear that Siri is down. We’ve tested five iPhone 4S models, all of which are running iOS 5.1. One of the iPhones in the TechCrunch office is running iOS 6, and Siri seems to be working fine on the newer OS.
Twitter confirms, and there are some pretty funny tweets coming out of this very serious crisis.
To be fair, Siri doesn’t work that well anyway, even when she’s not down. There’s a lot of confusion when using unusual names, and without WiFi there’s a pretty good chance you won’t get an answer at all. Perhaps, iOS 6 will fix that. → Read More
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It’s still a hairy problem for every mobile app developer: how do you attract new users in a hopelessly crowded app store?
Last year, video trailers for apps emerged as one popular for developers (and particularly game developers) to acquire users as Apple cracked down on other methods.
Several companies including San Francisco’s Flurry, which is also a popular mobile analytics provider, effectively became mobile video ad networks. Now the company is saying that a year later, it’s now seeing 100 million completed video ad views for mobile apps in its network. It’s also bringing its video ad network to Android. → Read More