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This week it’s American gas, Japan’s lack of startups, and J-tech to make horses happy! Welcome to Japanese Technology from the Future Friday: It’s already Friday west of the international dateline – here in Japan, it’s totally the future. The weekly JTFF is our somewhat technosnarky coverage of 2-5 particularly important, specifically Japan-related tech stories. [...]

With the recent resurrection of Jawbone's Up, as well as news of Nintendo's planned Wii U FitMeter, it's become clear that competition in wearables is just now heating up. And now Nike, one of the forerunners of the category, is reaching outside of t...

Whether you're currently keeping calm, or simply carrying on, we've got some good news for you steadfast Brits: Kickstarter makes its official launch in the UK on October 31st. Sure, its arrival was rather inevitable, but All Hallows' Eve will mark t...

RIM just can't seem to avoid staff shakeups. Hampus Jakobsson, The Astonishing Tribe founder and a key factor in BlackBerry 10's interface design, has signaled that he's leaving the smartphone maker. He cites an itch to launch another startup as the ...

It's no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility -- of acquiring new users -- is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue. Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

It's no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility -- of acquiring new users -- is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue. Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

Rafat Ali, founder of paidContent, sold his company to The Guardian for roughly $12.5 millionin 2008. Then he spent two years traveling the world, in a "quest for isolation after eight clamorous years." Now, he has built "the homepage for the travel industry" to inform your travels. Ali and co-founder Jason Clampet, who ran Frommers.com's original content efforts, aim to disrupt the enormous travel industry with a site that offers a combination of original media content and data tools to users, especially business travelers.

Rafat Ali, founder of paidContent, sold his company to The Guardian for roughly $12.5 millionin 2008. Then he spent two years traveling the world, in a "quest for isolation after eight clamorous years." Now, he has built "the homepage for the travel industry" to inform your travels. Ali and co-founder Jason Clampet, who ran Frommers.com's original content efforts, aim to disrupt the enormous travel industry with a site that offers a combination of original media content and data tools to users, especially business travelers.

Facebook is still huge and growing -- it added another 50 million users this past quarter, and it's about to break the one-billion-humans mark. But it still has to figure out how to survive on mobile. So we're focusing on Facebook and its developer ecosystem at our annual CrunchUp event this Friday in Redwood City, Calif. Our aim is to detail what’s working and what’s not, so entrepreneurs can better strategize how to think about Facebook when building their companies. Get your Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp tickets now! They can be found here. Some mobile-savvy startups are getting big growth from Facebook's platform. One of them is the music game SongPop. It now has more than 2.7 million daily active users and 11.4 million monthly active users via Facebook, and it's also a top free app in the Apple App Store. I'll be trying to get all the secrets to its success out of its creator, Mathieu Nouzareth, this Friday as part of our panel on Facebook's platform.

Facebook is still huge and growing -- it added another 50 million users this past quarter, and it's about to break the one-billion-humans mark. But it still has to figure out how to survive on mobile. So we're focusing on Facebook and its developer ecosystem at our annual CrunchUp event this Friday in Redwood City, Calif. Our aim is to detail what’s working and what’s not, so entrepreneurs can better strategize how to think about Facebook when building their companies. Get your Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp tickets now! They can be found here. Some mobile-savvy startups are getting big growth from Facebook's platform. One of them is the music game SongPop. It now has more than 2.7 million daily active users and 11.4 million monthly active users via Facebook, and it's also a top free app in the Apple App Store. I'll be trying to get all the secrets to its success out of its creator, Mathieu Nouzareth, this Friday as part of our panel on Facebook's platform.