Technology: What Geeks are talking about from TechCrunch

Felicis Ventures closes on $200 million, roughly double its last fund
 When I met Aydin Senkut in 2006, it was just months after he’d resigned from Google, where he was a senior manager responsible for strategic partner development in Asia Pacific. He was among a small number of “Googlaires” who had lots of money, great connections, and the ability to see many web startups before traditional VCs. In fact, many in the industry viewed Senkut… Read More

Framebridge raises $9M in the pursuit of frame and glory
 Online custom framing company Framebridge is continuing to take its market square on and is expanding growth with a Series B round of investment announced today. NEA and Revolution are back for a follow-up round, while SWaN & Legend Venture Partners are new in the picture for this round of funding. “We were attracted to how Framebridge has reinvigorated the custom framing industry… Read More

Forter raises $32M Series C, continues battle against online fraud
Fraud prevention company Forter today announced a $32m series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners and with follow-on funding from Sequoia and NEA. The company uses its Decision as a Service algorithms to help online retailers analyze their exposure to fraud at the time of check-out. It is so sure of its accuracy that it offers retailers a 100% guarantee against chargebacks after the fact. Read More

Verizon Q1 misses on sales of $32.2B, meets on EPS of $1.06, mum on Yahoo bid
 No word on Yahoo from Verizon, one of the strong contenders to buy the troubled Internet giant, but today the carrier (which now owns TechCrunch) reported its own mixed earnings for Q1. Dragged down by declines in wireless revenuess, the company posted total revenues of $32.2 billion and earnings per share of $1.06. While both were up compared to a year ago, the sales total fell short… Read More

Opera brings built-in VPN service to its browser
 When Opera acquired the virtual private network (VPN) service SurfEasy last March, it obviously did so to build that technology into its browser and maybe its Opera Max data-savings app. It took more than a year, but now Opera is actually launching a built-in version of SurfEasy in the early release developer version of its browser. The built-in VPN will protect your unencrypted browser… Read More

How Le Wagon is quietly becoming a major coding bootcamp in Europe
 Slowly but surely, French startup Le Wagon is becoming a leading coding bootcamp in Europe. Not only the company is executing quickly and expanding to a bunch of new cities, but Le Wagon is also refining its approach to coding bootcamps by using technology as much as possible. Le Wagon started in Paris more than two years ago. Only 15 students took part in the first class. I covered the… Read More

Backed VC outs its “community-driven” €30M European seed-stage fund
 Another day, another new European VC fund. This time it’s the turn of London-based Backed VC, which today is officially outing its €30 million pan-European seed-stage fund, although it’s been active since last year and has already made several investments. The aim, founding partner Andre de Haes tells me, is to bring a more “community-driven” approach to VC. Read More

Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising
 Question and answer site Quora has made its first push to monetize after it added advertising. Read More

The Lian-Li DK-04 is a big PC case and a motorized standing desk all-in-one
 What if I told you that you can strengthen your own core while liquid cooling your PCs? That’s the dream, right? Better still, you can accomplish all of that in a single product — which is precisely the sort of innovation one has come to expect from a computer accessory manufacturer that recently announced a case that looks like a luxury yacht. Read More

Federal judge rules FBI didn’t have proper warrant to hack child porn site
 A federal judge ruled today that the FBI did not obtain the proper warrant before hacking a child porn website and that the evidence it collected against one of the defendants, Alex Levin, must be suppressed. The case centers on a child porn site called Playpen, which was hosted on a hidden Tor service intended to conceal users’ identities. Read More

Rocket Internet’s Zalora loses co-founder and MD amid uncertain future
 Zalora, the fashion-focused e-commerce site backed by Rocket Internet that’s in the process of selling off two of its 11 country businesses in Asia, has lost two key executives, TechCrunch understands. Read More

The Shade Room is back on Facebook, other media startups still “in jail”
 The celebrity gossip and news startup The Shade Room is back on Facebook, the startup announced today, albeit under a new moniker. Its previous page, which had racked up more than 4 million followers, was “facebook.com/theshaderoom;” the new profile is “facebook.com/shaderoominc.” The startup said earlier its page had been removed from the Facebook ecosystem without… Read More

Review: Curb, energy monitoring for an entire home
 My kids don’t turn off the damn lights. Ever. And now, with Curb, I have a new way to see when they leave on their lights. All I have to do is look at an app. This is the future of parenting — and, well, energy monitoring. Curb is a comprehensive household energy monitoring system. The system monitors the entire home by using sensors installed in the circuit breaker. For many… Read More

Build your brand, and they will come
 To achieve market scale along the lines of GoPro and Fitbit, effectively working with big retailers is a necessary part of the process. Despite the growth of online channels, more than 90 percent of the $200 billion U.S. consumer electronics sales still comes from brick-and-mortar stores. Read More

Adtech is going native on steroids, hyper-personalization and consolidation
 After years of VC exuberance, 2015 marked the end of an investment cycle for the adtech industry. Quite a few companies with high valuations stumbled, downsized, restructured and pivoted in order to achieve, or at least progress on a path toward, sustainable profitability. Yet, despite the contraction in VC investments, the industry is growing dramatically. Read More

Qualtrics adds former Google and Apple exec Kim Scott to the board to help pull in top Silicon Valley talent
 Billion-dollar customer insight startup Qualtrics hopes to recruit top Silicon Valley talent to its home base in Utah as it continues to grow and part of that strategy involves adding professional tech coach Kim Scott to the board of directors. Qualtrics become one of a handful of new unicorns in the Beehive State last year and it continues to climb up and to the right. But it’s hard… Read More

Tripping.com sees non-hotel lodgings draw “420-friendly” travelers
 A search engine that lets travelers find and book a stay in non-hotel lodgings, Tripping.com, has detected a burgeoning “budbnb” trend in Colorado. San Francisco-based Tripping.com aggregates vacation rental listings from the likes of HomeAway, Booking.com, VRBO and other sites, and shows travelers the best prices on available lodgings. It currently lists about 8 million… Read More

Verizon’s AOL’s Huffington Post acquires virtual reality studio RYOT for $10 to $15 million
 The Huffington Post, owned by AOL, owned by Verizon, is buying a virtual reality studio called RYOT to build VR content production on the site, according to a blog post from site co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington. Sources have confirmed to us RYOT’s purchase price was in the $10 to $15 million range. The company had secured a little more than $3 million in Series A… Read More

BMW and Daimler abandon Apple Car talks
 If Apple really is working on a car, it won’t be the Ultimate Driving Machine™. BMW and Daimler have discontinued talks with Apple over a potential automotive collaboration, Handelsblatt reports. Read More