Today Nestio, the same service that helps you sort through and organize rental listings in the hunt for a new apartment, has today announced a brand new initiative to help improve the accuracy of listings across all of the web by offering a comprehensive service for brokers, landlords, and the end-user.

In the rough, and quite crowded world of NYC rental listings, TechStars-backed Nestio made a name for itself by taking all the various rental listing services on the web and compiling them in one place. But the service has been quiet of late, working on solving yet another problem for its users.

Despite the fact that Nestio offers a huge volume of listings, the service had little to no control over the accuracy of those listings. But to fix it, the company had to start all the way at the bottom of the food chain, with the landlords.

See, landlords are currently using a number of outdated systems to update their various touchpoints, including leasing teams, brokers, and their own company website. They use a combination of phone calls, whiteboards, spreadsheets, word docs, and even fax machines to update the world on a various space or unit that’s just become available, or rented.

That said, Nestio went quiet for nine months to build out a system to help everyone involved. It’s a web-based tool (optimized for mobile) that lets landlords, brokers and renters update and communicate rental listings in real-time. It looks a little like this:

A landlord learns that one of his newly listed apartments has been rented. He updates once on the Nestio platform that Unit 4B has gone off the market, and the leasing team, brokers, and end-users all see the change in real time. Right now, the platform is only ready for the landlord side of the system, but broker functionality (wherein brokers can make their own updates in real time) will be available soon.

Nestio has been evangelizing the new product for about six months, and has already landed 15 percent of the NYC landlord market. In the meantime, the team is reaching out to brokers with email blasts promoting the new system, and the open rate is about 76 percent.

The new service is available to landlords today, with broker functionality coming soon. Check it out here.

Instagram is planning to launch video functionality in two days. But don’t go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine’s into the deadpool, let’s just calm it down a second.

Vine has been declared by many as the “Instagram for Video.” Instagram’s own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after incumbents clobbered the space. What makes anyone think Instagram video would be any different?

Vine launched in January of this year, just after the holidays, and spent a few months ramping up the user base before launching on Android a few weeks ago. At the time, Vine had 13 million downloads. Not too shabby for approximately five months of work. It took Vine a few days to swing to the top of the App Store, and the same was true on Google Play following the Android launch.

When Instagram launched on Android, seventeen months after launching on iOS, it had around 30 million users. Obviously, users are a different metric than downloads, but you can see how Vine’s growth is relatively astounding given the timeframe. Especially when you factor in the less pointed evidence: Vine shares have surpassed Instagram shares on Twitter, for example, or even just hearing the term “Vine it” regularly in every day life. And having Twitter as a parent company doesn’t hurt either.

Vine is already established, and better yet, making waves. Vine was used by the Tribeca Film Festival for a special #6SecFilm Contest. The app has been toyed with by designers and advertisers to build new interactive music videos. Brands love Vine because it lets products move in ways that Twitter and Facebook don’t.

And Vine, of course, is still iterating quickly. We’ve seen the team respond to feature requests like the ability to use front-facing camera as well as rear-facing camera, and I wouldn’t be suprisedt to see interesting additions like Voiceover or Animation pop up soon.

Instagram is a powerful foe. The app has over 100 million users, and is now owned by the most powerful social network in the world. But this is far from the end of Vine.

First, Vine is the end product of what Instagram was built to be. Vine skipped past still photos, and filters to make those photos (taken with bad mobile cameras) look prettier, and the slow grind of adding @mentions and photo maps and all those iterative feature tweaks.

Instead, Vine launched as a true Instagram for video, which now has an active and seemingly happy user base. It’s not Twitter’s Cleaner fish, even if Twitter bought up the app and launched it into existence (unlike Instagram’s organic growth that was later bought up by Facebook).

But where Instagram feels like a consumption app first (a time sink, almost), Vine doesn’t. Scrolling through my Vine stream is like having a hangover during an earthquake. Most often, it’s a lot of clanging and wind noise coupled with shaky video of my friends’ latest vacation.

Still, Vines are excellent content. I am utterly pleased when I see a Vine.co link pop up in my Twitter stream, or surface in someone’s Facebook Timeline. I’m even more elated by a Vine.co link sent to my desktop. I like to watch the six-second thrill ride in all its glory. There’s something special about getting a glimpse (in video no less!) into someone’s world.

Instagram is a different story. There was a time when I could scroll through Instagram for days. I’m not so entranced by the photo-sharing phenom anymore. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I get a sense of Instagram fatigue, both on the creative and consumptive side.

Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’m all hopped up on Vine. Maybe Instagram’s had its time?

People like consuming video, sure, but it’s almost shocking how much people love making videos, too. Especially when given the right tools. When I see something cool happening out in the world, Instagram is no longer enough. I pray to the social media gods that this wondrous, hilarious, or downright insane scene before me will last the six seconds I need. I sense how strongly other people feel the same as I do.

Instagram for video might offer a similar creative experience, but it’ll be hard to do so without copying Vine’s ability to string together multiple clips in such an easy manner. Easy is the key. And we all know what happens when Facebook tries to copy a threat. Messenger launched after WhatsApp and Viber were blowing up. Poke launched to (shamefully) combat Snapchat. And here comes Instagram, ready to take on Vine.

But will Vine crumble where other competitors stood firm? Will it lay down and die?

Oh no! Not Vine! Vine will survive.

There’s plenty of information swirling about the HTC One Mini thus far, especially considering it’s not an officially announced handset by any means. Still, we’ve seen pictures, learned about rumored specs, and today it would appear that we’re one step closer to confirmation.

The folks at TNW spotted a User Agent Profile that was published to a website owned by HTC, the Taiwanese htcmms.com.tw.

According to the User Profile, the new phone will be called the HTC One Mini. Not much else is glaringly obvious from the profile, save for the fact that the phone will have a 720p display and run Android 4.2.

Past that, there isn’t much else to be plucked from the page full of code. However, there have been numerous leaks and rumors that have surfaced over the past few weeks.

Just last week, we got to see a picture of the alleged device in all its glory next to an HTC One. The HTC One is the Taiwanese handset maker’s latest flagship, following on the successes of the HTC One X that came before it. The One Mini is expected to pack lesser power into a similar design, for those looking for a smaller or more affordable handset with the same style.

That leak also surfaced some rumored specs, including a dual-core Snapdragon processor and dual front-facing speakers.

Before that, early in June, we stumbled upon a whole bevy of photos of the HTC One Mini, or at least a phone that looks incredibly similar to the HTC One Mini.

Phone makers are clearly aiming to spread out the love in terms of phone sizes, with a number of “mini” handsets making their way into stores recently. The HTC One Mini, though unconfirmed, is expected to be the latest to join that category of smartphone.

Sometimes, small size matters in a big way.

Sunrise, the Google-friendly calendar app that focuses on design, may have some competition coming from iOS 7, but even with the added pressure, the Sunrise team is clearly making strides.

Today, Sunrise was updated in the App Store to add support for foursquare check-ins, CrunchBase and Google Maps, along with some design tweaks.

The biggest part of the update comes via foursquare. Users now have the ability to see their past foursquare checkins direct from the app, complete with mapping support. As the folks over at Sunrise know, the more information you can source from a single app, the better.

Foursquare integration makes sense, considering that the Sunrise team is made up of ex-foursquare engineers and designers. In fact, it’s a wonder why it took so long to bake in the location-based social network in the first place.

Foursquare integration transforms the calendar into a log of where you’ve been just as much as a plan for where you’ll go.

Speaking of where you’ll go, Sunrise also added Google Maps integration to the app instead of Apple Maps, which should make many a weary traveler feel just slightly better on their way to someplace new.

But the update isn’t just about where you’re going, but how awesome you are at life when you get there. That said, Sunrise has baked in support for CrunchBase, a database of people, companies, and investors that is a part of the TechCrunch network. CrunchBase support will now automatically pull in extra data about companies and people you’re meeting based on the domain of their email address.

In terms of design tweaks, Sunrise has switched up multi-day events to show their duration on the main view, with a countdown for the duration left of the multi-day event. Moreover, the app now offers cilckable links for all phone numbers, websites and addresses.

Sunrise v 1.4 is available now in the App Store for free.

It was a big week in gadgets, and thus, a big TC Gadgets podcast it shall be. This week, we discuss developments at E3, including Xbox One and PS4 pricing, the death of Nokia’s Symbian OS, and of course, WWDC.

Will you buy a PS4 or an Xbox One? Does despair fill you from nose to navel when you remember the good old days of Symbian? Is the new iOS 7 design repelling, attractive, or some bizarre combination of the two? John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington, and Natasha Lomas touch on all of this and more.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

As photo-sharing truly hits its stride, an entire ecosystem is born around it. But what is creation without consumption? That’s what Divvy is all about.

We met the folks behind Divvy at the TC Meetup + Pitch-Off. At its core, the app aggregates all your photos from Facebook and Instagram (Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox all coming soon) into one filter-capable stream. You can also save photos from Instagram, zoom in on photos, and share with groups or individuals.

The Divvy team drove cross-country to get the Divvy word out before hitting up the Austin Pitch-Off. But does standalone consumption have a place in the already-crowded photo space?

While the idea of a centralized location for photo viewing and engagement (rather than multiple social networks to check) makes us pink* with barely controlled glee, we also maintain that a photo creation experience is integral to making any app of this kind a true “one-stop shop” experience.

But that’s not to say that the team isn’t already working on that.

I give Divvy a hesitant fly — I’m on board with idea and trajectory (assuming they add photo creation soon) but also don’t feel addicted to using the app. John also gives Divvy a fly, as well as his blessing.

*We got the memo.

Plum District, the hyperlocal deals site built by moms, for moms, has just acquired Spotivate, a startup led by ex-Googler Anthony Lee and former Telenav engineer Jorge Chang that launched out of AngelPad to offer local experiences to parents. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

For those of us who don’t have miniature terrors traipsing through our lives, here’s a little background on Plum District: The company was founded in 2009 by Megan Gardner as a local deals site that is not only dedicated to moms, but actually powered by moms. Plum District lets local moms hop on board as regional sales people who would then source the deals in their neighborhood for the site.

The company saw a number of large investments, namely from Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst, which has led to a total of $30.6 million in funding over the past few years. Plum District even dabbled in some acquisitions, picking up DoodleDeals Inc. and Chatterfly in 2011.

But then the hyperlocal deals market went through its own winter, as clarified by Groupon’s more recent tribulations, but Plum District held on. The company reorganized a bit, with a relatively large round of layoffs in August of 2012, and then founder and CEO Megan Gardner stepped down, making room for ex-Googler and longtime member of Plum District’s leadership team Susan Kim to take the helm.

Things have been quiet, but seemingly smooth, at Plum District ever since.

The Spotivate acquisition is the first big deal under Kim’s leadership, but seems like a strong fit and a good way to expand into experiential goods like summer camps, ballet lessons, etc. The deal began as a partnership between Plum District and Spotivate, wherein Spotivate content was being distributed through the Plum District network.

According to Kim, the open rate on emails increased by 50 percent, and the click-through rate doubled. That said, it wasn’t long before both Spotivate and Plum District were discussing a merger of some kind. Lee relays that after Plum District made an offer, a number of other offers came in as well (alongside the option to continue Spotivate), but Plum District felt like the right fit.

Both Lee and Chang will move over to Plum District, as VP of Product and VP of Engineering respectively, and both seem pleased to get back to developing excellent products instead of running a business from the top-down.

It was but two weeks ago that Dots, the highly addictive connect-the-dots-style betaworks-backed game, migrated the app to the iPad and added multiplayer support. Today, however, the company has a brand new update that may address some of your woes on the iPad.

The update lets users zoom to 1.5X or 3X the game view, so that the gameboard and the dots fill out more, or all, of the screen real estate on the bigger iPad.

“When we first pushed the iPad app, we thought that people would want to play the game at the same size that it was on the iPhone,” said Patrick Moberg, co-founder. “But we soon realized that our users had been playing Dots for iPhone at 2X mode (zoomed) on the iPad, and that they wanted the same blown-up experience with the iPad version of the app.”

Clearly, the Dots/betaworks team is ready to iterate as quickly as possible to keep up momentum.

When the app first launched on May 1st, I called it the most beautiful mobile game I’d ever seen. Matt joined in the chorus, and in a week’s time, a million other people had downloaded the app too.

And just as Paul Murphy explains in the interview, Dots cares much more about engagement than user acquisition, which is good news considering the app has seen well over 300 million games played.

And surely acquisition, as well as engagement, must be growing as the gamemaker introduced multiplayer mode. However, that’s not to say the new multiplayer functionality is without its flaws. As it stands now, users must pass and play from a single device. Both users play the exact same board, as opposed to leaving anything to the luck of the draw.

As Greg points out in his post, this alone makes the game that much more competitive and addictive, but there’s still room to grow. Moberg didn’t go into too much detail, but did explain that the team is thinking more and more about how to improve multiplayer mode in a way that doesn’t just copy other games out there, but does it in an entirely different way.

The update is available now on the App Store.

The days of a standard phone size are gone. 3.5-inch? 4.3-inch? 5-inch? Phone makers are less concerned with which size is right, and clearly becoming more concerned with offering as many sizes as possible.

Case in point: Engadget has surfaced a leaked photo of what appears to be a smaller version of the HTC One, or the One Mini. Obviously, the photo itself isn’t confirmed, nor is the phone, but the picture seems to match up to some earlier leaks, so at least leak volume seems to be lending credibility.

According to Engadget’s source, the HTC One Mini has a 4.3-inch 720p display, a metallic unibody design, Android 4.2.2 complete with Sense and BlinkFeed, and all powered by a Snapdragon 400 dual-core chip. None of this is confirmed, but we do call into question the metallic unibody design, as the picture appears to show a plastic bezel on the phone.

You’ll also notice that there is Beats branding on the phone, as well as the same front-facing speakers that HTC is pushing as a key feature of the One series.

Thrilling.

Perhaps more interesting than the phone itself, though, is the constantly evolving nature of smartphone size trends. Remember when Zoolander came out? Derek answered a phone that was the size of a mini army action figure, and finally heard the voice of God.

Before Apple ushered in the era of all-touch devices, small was the new new thing in cell phones. Clearly, that changed. Android manufacturers pushed against Apple in size, knowing that Jobs was reluctant to deviate past the 3.5-inch iPhone screen.

Galaxy devices had larger screens, Droids had larger screens, and HTC jumped on board, too. Until one day, Apple announced that the iPhone 5 would have a 4-inch display, the first time that the size of the iPhone display had ever changed. It was almost unsettling.

Zoom to today.

Android manufacturers are pulling back into 4- to 4.3-inch territory with phones like the Motorola Razr M, the Galaxy S4 Mini, and now the HTC One Mini. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that Apple is experimenting with even larger screen sizes, according to a recent report by Reuters.

In other words, they’re covering all the bases they can. Perhaps I’m annoyed that my 4-inch iPhone 5 doesn’t fit as snuggly in the pocket of my jeans, whereas a friend of mine could be downright obsessed with the video viewing and gaming experience on his giant Galaxy Note 2.

People are different, and so must their phones be. But it also seems clear that phone makers, while spreading a variety of sizes out in front of consumers, are still looking for the sweet spot.

So where will we land? Your guess is as good as mine, but be prepared for some more back and forth before phone makers have figured out how to please our eyes, our hands, and our pants pockets all at the same time.

Hublished is still in private beta, so details are sparse on what the new content distribution platform (which reportedly helps content producers market their work through a webinar, e-book, podcast marketplace/network) is up to. However, we do know that the company has received over $150k in funding before its forthcoming beta launch next month.

So where did this cash come from?

Well, interestingly enough, a solid chunk of the funding came from none other than Lawrence Lenihan. Many of you know him as a partner at FirstMark Capital, but to the Hublished founders, he was the NYU Professor in their entrepreneurial class entitled Ready, FIRE!, Aim.

We sat down with Lenihan, and Hublished co-founders Ben Borodach and Ryan Kuhel to discuss the effect this class, and Lenihan, had on the trajectory of their as-yet-unlaunched startup.

The story goes like this: Part of the promise of Lenihan’s course was that the team who finished the Spring 2012 semester with an investible idea would walk away with the entirety of Lenihan’s NYU Professor’s salary, a cool $12,500. The rest of the $150k came along the way from undisclosed angels and family and friends.

Ryan Kahul, one of the Hublished co-founders, was in the class and participated in the competition with his co-founders from Rutgers.

Months passed, and it turns out that Hublished came in second. But Lenihan explains in his blog post that the first place team decided that they did not want to be irresponsible with the funding, and that they’re product wasn’t viable in the long term.

That said, Lenihan still made good on his promise and handed over the funding to Hublished, who has been raising since the idea’s inception in the summer of 2011.

Now, the company is revving up to a launch next month. Luckily, the co-founders sent us a little sneak peak screengrab of the platform in action.

Meanwhile, Lenihan has revealed that he won’t be teaching the same course next year, but that he does have some ideas floating around that still involve teaching and fostering entrepreneurial spirits, but that are more suited toward 2013 instead of 2008.

We’ve all been waiting restlessly for the release of the jOBS biopic, starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, but dismay overtook us when we heard its April release date had been pushed back.

But fear not, you Jobsian fanbois, for Open Road has finally revealed that jOBS will see a nationwide release on August 16.

Word comes by way of The Wrap, which got the scoop last night, and official word came via Deadline.

Here’s the studio’s official statement:

Open Road Films will release JOBS – the highly anticipated film chronicling the story of Steve Jobs’ ascension from college dropout to one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century – nationwide on August 16, 2013. JOBS details the major moments and defining characters that influenced Steve Jobs on a daily basis from 1971 through 2001. The film plunges into the depths of his character, creating an intense dialogue-driven story that is as much a sweeping epic as it is an immensely personal portrait of Steve Jobs’ life. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matthew Whiteley, JOBS was shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Carpenter and produced by Mark Hulme. JOBS stars Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine.

The movie has been in development since last year, and TechCrunch even got a sneak peek behind the scenes after Rip Empson made his way down to L.A. to be an extra on the set. Since then, the biopic has debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

However, Open Road explained that its original April release date would have to be pushed back since the film wasn’t receiving enough hype to be released. In other words, expect to see jOBS biopic posters about as often as you see an article on the forthcoming iPhone over the summer.

Ashton Kutcher, part sexy actor and part Silicon Valley investor, reportedly took his role as Steve Jobs quite seriously. During the 1983 Keynote scene, wherein Jobs introduces the famous 1984 commercial, Kutcher was said to have been quite bossy, just like Steve likely was, and in-character the whole time.

He even went on Jobs’ fruitarian diet, forcing him into the hospital after trying to sustain himself on nuts and fruits alone.

But all’s well that ends well. Let’s just hope that critics and fans are less critical of the Jobs biopic then they are of a Jobs-less Apple.

[via TheVerge]

Vine has already clarified just how quickly its userbase is growing, with the announcement that the app had hit 13 million downloads by the time Twitter launched it on Android. This was all just a week ago. Today, however, we’ve learned that Vine has climbed to the top of the charts on Android as the top social app and the No. 4 free app on Google Play. Instagram is No. 5.

For those of you who don’t like smartphones, GIFs or general merriment, Vine is a new app released by Twitter in January of this year. The app works a bit like an Instagram for video, letting you shoot creatively edited, six-second looping videos to share with your friends on social networks, etc.

The app has seen some incredible growth in the short time it’s been available, hitting No. 1 on App Store charts in just a matter of days. A week later, we learned that Vine had already grown to be about twice as popular as SocialCam and other competing video-sharing apps.

The team has been iterating ever since, adding the ability to use both front- and rear-facing cameras and working out some kinks. And it’s clearly paid off.

Nick Bilton of the NYT noticed just a few days ago that there seem to be more Vine shares on Twitter than Instagram for the first time ever, thanks to a handy graph from Topsy Analytics.

This could have something to do with the fact that Instagram pulled Twitter Card integration to direct more traffic to Instagram.com, but I’m not convinced that that’s a conscious thought running through the minds of Instagrammers as they’re deciding where to share.

What’s more likely is that Vine users want to share on Twitter because the Vine ecosystem is still growing, and those users want to ensure that their creation gets as many views from friends as possible. Then add to it the fact that Vine launched on Android just around the time that Vine.co shares surpassed Instagram.com shares, and it’s clear that Vine simply has a growing group of people interested in using the service.

Vine is available now in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Gen Y is obsessed with content. Addicted even. This explains why Reddit and BuzzFeed are two of the most popular websites on the Internet right now. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for disruption, right?

At least, that’s how David Arabov, Gerard Adams, and Jonathan Francis, founders of Elite Daily, feel. Elite Daily is a blog, at its core, that was designed specifically for Generation Y, but with a twist. Elite Daily doesn’t have the same editorial structure as blogs like BuzzFeed and Gawker, with salaried writers churning out story after story to satisfy the masses.

Instead, Elite Daily has a strong editorial team of 25 people who not only write content for the generation, but field thousands of stories from over 250 unpaid contributors from around the world. The editorial team ranges in age from 20 to 24, fitting perfectly the demographic to which they’re writing.

According to co-founders Arabov and Francis, who started the publication in a dorm room with no funding to date, Elite Daily sees between 120 and 150 stories cross the home page. To give you a little perspective, TechCrunch is seen as a publication that pushes a lot of stories, and we only have around 50 to 60 stories cross our home page every day.

In other words Elite Daily is a bountiful harvest of content for the content-obsessed. But let’s talk quality versus quantity. With over 250 unpaid contributors, a few boring, poorly written, or just downright offensive stories surely find their way into the Elite Daily editorial inbox.

But Arabov explains that not all stories are accepted from contributors, but those that are go through two editors before hitting the home page. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re polished to AP-style perfection, but it does mean that they are interesting pieces of bloggery.

Regarding offensive content, Elite Daily believes that Gen Y should have a voice. Perhaps that voice is yelling crude, sexist, or just plain sleazy things, but it still deserves to be heard.

So far, the experimental new media site seems to be faring well. In May, Elite Daily saw 8.5 million uniques, and 89 percent growth from April to May.

Elite Daily underwent a major redesign on May 1, and is ready for your perusing pleasure whenever you are. Just click here.

Today is the big day. The era of iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, the Mac Pro is upon us, even if we won’t actually enjoy these wonderful wares for another few months.

That said, we’ve switched things up a bit and decided to do an extra, non-Friday TC Gadgets podcast to discuss how fundamentally all of our lives have changed.

This week, the podcast features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, and Romain Dillet. But if you listen closely, and pray hard enough, you may be able to hear the faint whisperings of a French Siri in the background.

Enjoy, and happy Monday!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

We heard it would be flat. We heard it would be black and white. We heard that it would be a totally different experience.

It is. iOS 7, the latest version of Apple’s flagship mobile operating system, is here, and it’s almost entirely different from the versions that came before. Gone are the skeuomorphic designs and 3D effects, replaced by Sir Jony Ive’s “flat design.” Rumors had been flying for weeks about the new OS and now it’s here and it is, at least at this early reckoning, a massive change for the six year old operating system.

First, we must remember that Ive, Apple’s industrial designer now in control of software following the departure of Scott Forstall, isn’t a believer in interfaces that copy real-world objects. In the past, making the Notes app look like a legal pad or the calendar app look like a Moleskine calendar notebook were part of the iOS design philosophy, as ingrained in the OS as “Slide To Unlock.” All that is gone now.

Are you ready for a whole new world?

New Look:

• iOS 7 has a new font leading the way, which seems to be a sort of Helvetica Neue Ultra. It’s very skinny, clean, and it was hinted at in the iOS 7 banners that went up for WWDC yesterday.
• Instead of white bars on a black background, Apple will now tell you what kind of service coverage you have with five little dots, which are white and grey depending on how strong the signal is across a translucent background.
• The lock screen is changed for the first time in iOS’s history, with no more shine top or bottom bars for slide to unlock or the clock. Instead, Slide to unlock is translucent above the background image.
• Default app icons are now flatter, but not quite flat, just as predicted.
• Jony Ive’s hand has had its way with iOS notifications. The notifications panel isn’t laced with dark grey linen anymore, but actually has a very flat look to it. There is a today view, that lets you see friends birthdays, upcoming invitations, calendar, stocks, and a quick look at tomorrow.
• The apps all seem to have a white base, except for the stocks app which has a black background and the weather app, which shows motion in the background to convey the current weather.
• The keyboard is more white, than grey, with a translucency that lets you see what’s underneath the keyboard.

New Features

Control Center

• Control Center is a pull-up tray that is available in your lock screen.
• You can adjust brightness, volume, and other settings including Wifi, Airplane mode, rotation lock, or Bluetooth.
• The Control Center even offers a flashlight, along with tabs for music, camera, and other quick-access apps.
• The Control Center takes on the environment it’s in, so if you swipe up while you’re in mail, it will have the same blue and white coloring under that translucent panel.

Multitasking

• iOS 7 lets you multitask between all third-party apps with much better battery consumption.
• You can double-tap the home button to enter into multi-tasking mode, just like always, but the interface for multitasking has been revamped. It appears to offer live previews, but Apple wasn’t clear about that.

Safari

• Safari opens straight into full screen mode now, with the option to pull down to bring up the search bar at the top.
• The search field has been improved to be a unified smart search field, which lets you have access to all your favorite websites with a single tap.
• Tabs come with a totally new interface, scrolling in a vertical carousel, and there are no longer any limits. In other words, you can have as many tabs as you want, as opposed to just 8 like before. Swipe a tab off to the side to throw it away.
• The new Safari is integrated with iCloud keychain from OS X Mavericks, and also comes with parental controls.

AirDrop

• You can share sharesheets with other people by simply tapping their name. No NFC required.
• Airdrop supports iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad Mini

Camera And Photos

• The Camera app lets you swipe between your various camera types, such as panorama or HDR so you can quickly take a pic instead of fumbling around with settings.
• Photos marks the first update to the photo gallery on iOS since it was introduced.
• You can search based on date, and location, within the photos app.
• Instagram must be flattered — Apple has introduced photo filters so you can add a little professionalism to the picture.
• Users can share via AirDrop, iCloud photo-sharing, as well as shared Photo Streams.
• You can even share video with iCloud photo-sharing.

Siri:

• Siri has a new voice! It sounds similar, but also weird. You can choose a male or female voice, if you like. Voices include languages like French, German, and other languages “over time.”
• The visual UI has also been upgraded, with a sound wave going along the bottom.
• Siri has also been integrated with settings, letting you tell her to turn on bluetooth, or lower the screen brightness.
• The company has also added support for Twitter, Wikipedia, and shows web search results direct from Bing.

iOS in the Car

• iOS in the Car depends a lot on Siri.
• It puts the iOS homescreen on the screen of your car, and lets you search for directions, listen to music, etc.

App Store

• You can now search for apps based on location. In other words, search for apps by the Louvre and see a lot of French museum apps.
• The App Store also automatically updates apps for you in the background now. Hallelujah again!

iTunes Radio:

• Apple has finally introduced the much-anticipated iTunes Radio, which gives a Genius-like experience to the entire 26-million title iTunes catalog.
• You can see the full list of songs on each station by clicking history, with purchase and preview buttons built right in to send you to the iTunes store.
• iTunes Radio also lets you customize each station by clicking a star to show that you want more of this type of music.
• iTunes Match users will get an ad-free experience, but others will be able to use the app for free with a few audio and text ads.

Activation Lock:

• This is for those of us who have had an iPhone stolen.
• If a thief steals your phone and tries to turn off Find My iPhone, they can no longer turn the device back on without your iCloud password.
• Users can also block messages and calls from other users.

Fotopedia has made quite a name for itself as one of the leading media consumption apps for travel, but the company (led by former Apple Apps Division CTO Jean-Marie Hullot) is ready to zero in on media creation as well.

In April, the company soft-launched a new app called Reporter, in the hopes that the app’s user base would grow organically. And grow, it did! Fotopedia Reporter has already racked up 300,000 downloads, with a user base that is coming back every single day, says founder Hullot.

Reporter works like this: When you download the iPad app, you have the option to browse through various “magazines.” These magazines are stories (told almost entirely with images and a little text) that were created by other users around a particular event, passion, or just a day in the life.

Creating a “magazine” is just as easy as browsing. Users can choose their photos, select a particular design or theme from pre-created options, and then publish within the Reporter platform or to Facebook or Twitter.

According to Hullot, over 20 percent of the user base are creators as opposed to readers only, which is a solid figure. Consider this: the app has only been available for a couple of months and has already surpassed 100,000 stories on the platform.

But why Reporter? Well, Hullot explained that with the other apps out of Fotopedia, like Heritage, users loved the content but the magazines had to be created by Fotopedia itself. This wasn’t scalable, in the eyes of Hullot.

However, Reporter lets people create the stories themselves, which allows for more variation in content and much more content in general. Clearly, users are taking a liking to the idea of curating their own content, which has been specifically apparent with Flipboard’s launch of personalized magazines.

Since Fotopedia has troves of data concerning the way users interact with content on the iPad and web, Fotopedia was in a particularly advantageous spot when creating reporter. Their data set parameters like the fact that users can only create stories with 10 to 20 pictures in them, because that’s how many images users usually consume from other Fotopedia apps. The data also encouraged the Fotopedia team to take inspiration from Windows 8, “as weird as that sounds coming from a bunch of former Apple people,” Hullot added. “We want the images to be big and central, so that people click in a big way.”

In terms of generating revenue, Fotopedia reporter is working with advertisers to offer a few different ways to promote within the Reporter app. Brands, such as Rolex, can create their very own magazine within the app using all of their own content. However, certain brands might benefit more from aggregating user-generated content within the Reporter app and pulling it into a central story (which happens to be another option for brands).

The Fotopedia Reporter app was updated just this morning to version 1.1, to help users deal with the abundance of content in the app. Feature additions include a “My Feed” section, letting you curate stories to your own interest, the ability to create your own aggregated magazine from your interest, and subscribe to personal magazines. Reporter also hooked in to Flickr so users can pull in their own images for magazines.

The Fotopedia Reporter app is available now on the App Store.

Editing video is tedious enough on its own, but it becomes a whole new world of pain when producers, editors, audio guys, and others are trying to collaborate on a single project.

That’s where First Cut Pro (not to be confused with Final Cut Pro) comes in. The software comes out of Austin, where the company won our TC Meetup + Pitch-off Competition, meaning that the First Cut Pro guys will be ready to roll at TC Disrupt SF in September.

But what is First Cut Pro? Well, in short, it’s a collaborative dashboard that lets multiple people work and give feedback on a single project.

The most important feature is the ability to autopause video. As an editor is watching a rough cut of a project, each keystroke he makes (as commentary to the video) is recorded alongside a timestamp. While he’s typing, the video pauses, and once he presses enter, the video resumes.

Users can also create custom buttons to insert at whatever time they’d like, which are timestamped just like comments are. Comments are threaded, just like they are in most professional collaboration software like Convo and Yammer.

Once commentary has been added, users have control over who can access the project, sharing to others via email with a special pin.

Finally, First Cut Pro closes the loop, letting managers prioritize comment threads and then assign particular cuts or jobs to various editors.

When the project is exported, the same timestamped comments show up on each editor’s dashboard in their editing software of choice. Currently, the platform supports AVID, Adobe and Final Cut.

First Cut Pro is available now here. It has a tiered pricing structure, starting with a free account for personal use and going all the way up to $119/month for power users.

In the ever-raging Map War, Google seems to be not only a first mover, but the boldest mover.

According to the Globes, an Israel-based publication, Google is reportedly set to acquire the Israeli transit and navigation company Waze for $1.3 billion, making it one of the larger Google acquisitions in recent memory. This latest development comes amid swirling rumors that Waze would be bought up by one of the big guys, by Facebook for $1 billion, Apple for $500 million and now Google.

Waze provides information on traffic congestion, police presence, speed-sensing cameras, and other transportation-related information thanks to the crowdsourced information flowing in from its almost 50 million users.

According to a number of other Hebrew sources, the deal will be in all cash. Noam Bardin will reportedly remain as CEO and Waze will also continue as its own brand. Waze’s R&D facility, as well as their offices in Israel, will remain in place for at least three years.

We had heard originally that Apple was interested in Waze, which made perfect sense at the time considering Apple was building and releasing a buggy, inadequate Maps app. Waze probably could have helped out quite a bit.

However, those rumors died down to make room for new ones, namely that Facebook was considering buying the social satellite-navigation company.

In fact, Globes reports that Facebook executives went into negotiations with Waze right in Israel, but neither company could come to a comfortable resolution. But perhaps more interesting, Google moved in to have chats with Waze while Facebook was still in negotiations to buy, showing just how eager Google is to block out potential competitors in the mapping space.

Neither Google nor Waze is commenting on the acquisition at this moment, but this isn’t the first time that the search giant has been paired with Waze. Just last month, Bloomberg reported that the companies were in talks, and that Waze was seeking more than $1 billion.

The report says the deal has just entered due diligence, and details are subject to change.

Google’s long-term goal with Waze is somewhat unclear. It obviously increases its footprint in Israel, where it currently operates two offices, and there is a thriving startup scene, from which Google has already plucked Labpixies and Quicksee. But looking further, this is also a good way to keep competitors like Apple and Facebook away from such reliable and popular mapping software.

Remember, Google’s Maps application is already a world-class product, with nothing even remotely close following behind in terms of competition. But that’s not to say that folks aren’t trying. Apple booted Google Maps as the default mapping app on its iDevices with the launch of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5. Unfortunately for Apple, Apple Maps is abysmal.

By buying Waze, Google keeps competitors like Apple and others away from the easy out, which would be an acquisition of a company with already-working and reliable technology. With this deal, Google effectively blocks Apple and Facebook from even having a chance.

See, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and any other big tech player will be focusing on location technology as a way to bolster other services. Maps is the spinal cord of the mobile ecosystem. It affects advertising, other social tools and apps, and e-commerce. Apple, Facebook and friends won’t give up on owning our location data anytime soon, but Google is doing a good job of blocking out the potential to buy technology instead of build it.

Waze was founded back in 2007, and has since raised a total of $67 million from investors like KPCB, Horizon Ventures, Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Vertex Venture Capital.

Mark Zuckerberg has just taken to Facebook to personally respond to the accusations that Facebook is involved in PRISM, an alleged secret government program that gives the government access to user information, denying that Facebook has ever given any government “direct access” to its servers.

This comes just hours after Google responded to the unfolding events regarding PRISM, which reportedly allows the NSA and FBI access to the servers and user information of multiple major US tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple.

Zuck’s response isn’t that different from Larry Page’s:

I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It’s the only way to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.

The post has over 56,000 likes at the time of writing.

It’s worth noting that the wording in Page’s statement and Zuckerberg’s statement is very similar. Just check out the Doc in this tweet from Alex Madrigal:

Here's a Google doc with the Page and Zuckerberg denials: docs.google.com/document/d/1mv… Similar passages are bolded.—
Alexis C. Madrigal (@alexismadrigal) June 07, 2013

All of the companies accused of participating in the program have denied their participation, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Dropbox, PalTalk, and Aol. Five out of eight of those companies denied giving “direct access” to servers to any government agencies. At least half of them have said “they never heard of PRISM”. Page and Zuckerberg both said verbatim that they hadn’t heard of PRISM “until yesterday”.

The seeming coordination here is just one floating and possible theory. The other is that the domino effect was necessary. Once one company denies participation (regardless of the truth, which we clearly are very unsure of right now), the rest must follow suit.

If you’ve got that summertime sadness, look no further than this week’s TC Gadgets Podcast. In it, we discuss the new Form 1 printer which is meant to compete with the likes of MakerBot, as well as all the upcoming WWDC goodness from Apple, including a revamped iOS 7, the new iRadio, and even some new MacBooks? Maybe?

John Biggs, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington and Greg Kumparak discuss this and more below. Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.