This Week On The TC Europe Podcast: Google Is The Bad Guy, TechStars Invades London, Memoto Becomes Narrative
Welcome back to another episode of the most European tech podcast around. This week, we talk about Google’s tendency to be the bad guy in Europe. It has some issues with France’s CNIL around privacy — at least it would be fine if the company paid corporate taxes. This is the TechCrunch Europe Podcast, wherein we European writers discuss tech news, as well as what’s happening in our startup scene. Also happening this week, it was TechStars first demo day in London! Three of us were there and picked our favorite startups. Finally, Darrell introduced us to Narrative, a lifelogging ... → Read More
TechCrunch - Thursday, October 3, 2013
Kevin Packingham, Samsung’s chief product office in the U.S., has left the company. The New York Times was the first to report the news, and Samsung confirmed the departure to Business Insider. “Kevin Packingham has departed Samsung Mobile,” said Samsung spokesperson Jessica Redman. “We thank Kevin for his contributions and wish him well in his future endeavors.” Samsung would not comment on the reason for Packingham’s departure. Packingham worked at Samsung for two years and helped launch such flagship products as the Galaxy Note, Galaxy S III, and Galaxy S4. In March of this year, Packingham spoke at Business Insider’s ... 
Beat it, Facebook. If you think Lindsay Lohan’s hit 2004 single “Rumors” might have been written about your Facebook experience, have we got news for you. A new line of graphic T-shirts promises to confuse Facebook’s facial recognition technology so that the site will back up off you and/or let you live.
Web URL shortener Bit.ly is out with an outstanding new tool that shows the popularity of different media outlets in every state. The visualization incorporated the data Bit.ly has collected about short links that send people to different online media properties. The real-time media map allows us to look at which sites were most popular in every state. Here, for instance, is the top online media property in every state. It’s worth noting that despite its inclusion here, POLITICO also produces a daily print edition. Here’s the most popular magazine in each state, according to Bit.ly’s data: Here are the most ... 
Rumors of Amazon working on a smartphone started years ago. Now, there’s even more evidence that Amazon is working on not just one, but two smartphones. There’s a cheap model and an expensive one, TechCrunch reports, citing inside sources. The expensive model, dubbed “Smith,” will reportedly have a 3D user interface. TechCrunch’s sources say the phone will have four cameras, with one located at each corner of the phone, to track your eye and head motions. So the actual screen is not truly 3D, but simply gives the impression of 3D. “Smith” will also reportedly have an image recognition feature so that ... 
All hail! Hey, have you guys heard of this cool new thing called 3D printing? It’s pretty neat! That’s the word from the analysts at Gartner, who’ve just released a report predicting a boom in sales. In the firm’s first report on the 3D printers cheaper than $ 100K (so, enterprise and consumer, but not industrial-grade), Gartner predicts the market will grow 49 percent this year, predicting a weirdly precise sales figure of 56,507 units; hit 98,065 in 2014; and follow that with a “near doubling of unit shipments in 2015.”
