Time to wake up people. Disrupt Berlin is going to be the best, most efficient and deal-friendly startup you will go to this year. But even though you’ve..
Time to wake up people. Disrupt Berlin is going to be the best, most efficient and deal-friendly startup you will go to this year.
But even though you’ve heard the rumblings , you haven’t yet signed up for 2-for-1 tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2017. That’s cool, we get it, you’re busy.
But… you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. The time to act is now. On April 5, we’ll be releasing a limited number of tickets at a special two-for-one price.
By taking advantage of this opportunity now, you can use this extra ticket to bring a friend, colleague, or whoever else you might want to spend a few days geeking out with at Disrupt.
To sign up, all you need to do is enter your email address here on or before April 4. Seriously, that’s it. On April 5th, you’ll receive an email with a link to purchase these deeply discounted tickets. You’re going to want to act quickly, however, as there are only 50 pairs of tickets available , and tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Disrupt attendees get to take in all the things that make the conference the best startup show in Europe. You’ll get to check out promising early-stage international companies in the Startup Alley, Hardware Alley, and the Startup Battlefield competition. Plus, you’ll hear from industry experts in a series of interviews and fireside chats, folks like BlueYard Capital co-founder Ciarán O’Leary and Earlybird Co-Founder and Partner Dr. Christian Nagel , to name a few.
Plus, you’ll get to keep the action going attending the many after-parties when the show floor closes up for the day.
If you happen to be a part of a startup, numerous members of the media will be in attendance as well, making Disrupt a perfect storm to get your company out in front of the folks that can help take it to the next level.
What are you waiting for? Sign up today.
Disrupt Berlin 2017 takes place December 4-5 at the historical Arena Berlin in the heart of Berlin, Germany. We can’t wait to see you all there!
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team at sponsors @techcrunch.com .

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Uber has confirmed that all its autonomous test cars are now back on the road in the US, following an accident in Arizona on Friday evening that left one of..
Uber has confirmed that all its autonomous test cars are now back on the road in the US, following an accident in Arizona on Friday evening that left one of its vehicles flipped on its side. The company temporarily suspended its entire test program in the wake of the accident.
A spokeswoman said Uber ended its suspension of the testing program in Tempe and Pittsburg yesterday, following an investigation into the incident which involved one of its Volvo SUV self-driving test vehicles. It had earlier restarted tests in San Francisco , where it is currently running development test operations.
The spokeswoman told us Uber felt confident in returning its remaining autonomous test vehicles to the road, having paused the passenger pilots to get a clearer picture of what happened in Tempe.
The Uber test car had been driving autonomously at the time of the incident but did not have any passengers (except the driver) on board. All Uber’s autonomous test vehicles include a driver sitting in the driver’s seat in a position to take over should it be required.
No one has been reported seriously injured in the incident, and local police reports suggest the crash happened after a human-driven car failed to yield to the Uber, driving into it and flipping it onto its side.

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Google has announced that its Google Home connected speaker will launch in the UK on April 6, along with the Google Wifi router.
Google has announced that its Google Home connected speaker will launch in the UK on April 6, along with the Google Wifi router.
The Google Home connected speaker, which started shipping in the US back in November , is seeking to compete with the likes of Amazon’s Echo (which launched in the UK last fall ) — offering a physical housing for Google’s voice assistant tech, the eponymous Google Assistant, to position its listening ear perpetually inside your home.
The company mocked up a fake house in London this morning to demo the device to journalists. Which may or may not be a fitting metaphor for the extensively hyped concept of the ‘smart home’.
But for those Brits who dream of sitting on an impossibly white leather couch, next to Google’s always listening microphone primed and ready to tell you what the weather is tomorrow, or add something to your to-do list, or inform you where the nearest petrol station is and how to get there then today is a special day indeed.
Unlike the Amazon Echo, Google Home does not have such a sprawling ecommerce back-end to plug into — and while Google Home offers some limited ecommerce options in the US , it does not appear to be bringing any such services to the UK as yet.
Given its head-start with the tech, the Echo has also amassed considerably more third party app integrations — such as services like JustEat and Uber. So you can already ask Alexa (Amazon’s voice assistant) to order you a taxi or a takeaway. But won’t yet get joy out of Google Assistant on that front, though JustEat is apparently planning to support the device this year.
Google Home is being priced at £130 in the UK — so it’s slightly less expensive than Amazon’s Echo (£150). While the app-controlled Google WiFi router is priced at £130 for one unit (or £230 for two, for those with more internal real estate to blanket with wi-fi).
In terms of localization, the Google Home speaker is able to deliver news briefings from a selection of UK publications including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Sun, The Telegraph, Huffington Post, Sky News and Sky Sports.
Otherwise, it’s capable of playing music on command from a small selection of music streaming services, assuming you’re a subscriber — such as Google Play Music, YouTube Music or Spotify Premium (subscriptions for these services are not included in the price of the device).
Owners of a small number of other connected devices such as the (Google-owned) Nest thermostat, Philips Hue lightbulbs or Samsung’s SmartThings hub can also control additional connected devices via Google Home voice commands. Google’s Chromecast can also be controlled via the speaker.
Buyers should be aware that all voice interactions with Google Home will be data-mined by Google to build a clearer picture of your domestic life and preferences for ad targeting purposes. The company says it stores your conversation data in perpetuity — unless you actively opt to delete it (which it says is possible).
Google also appears to retain any conversation data of users who uninstall Google Home and delete their account — you have to actively go into the setting and delete the conversation history prior to deleting your account if you want to remove your conversation data from Google’s servers. And even after a deletion Google says it may also still retain some “service-related information” pertaining to your account.
While the Google Home speaker listens locally for a so-called “hotword” — aka the phrase “Ok, Google” — before it starts streaming your conversations to Google’s cloud for processing and storing, it’s of course trivially easy for this to be triggered accidentally, and whatever you happen to say at such moments will also be recorded in perpetuity on Google’s servers for data-mining and potentially passing to third parties. Welcome to the ‘smart home’.

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Sweden-based startup Truecaller made its name as a nifty mobile app that helps people fielder out unwanted phone calls and messaging, but now it is making a..
Sweden-based startup Truecaller made its name as a nifty mobile app that helps people fielder out unwanted phone calls and messaging, but now it is making a move to become a platform.
At a press event in India, Truecaller’s largest market based on its 150 million users, the company announced a series of partnerships, including a tie-in with Google which will see the U. S. firm’s Duo newly launched video calling feature integrated into the Truecaller app.
The Truecaller app, which is dedicated to battling annoying calls, is about to become much more than that. In addition to the Duo tie-in, Truecaller is boosting the app by integrating Truemessenger , its two-year-old service for making messaging smarter and managing spam.
Now, in India, Truecaller for Android will go from being a dialing app alternative to a service that can handle calls and also manage SMS and make video calls.
But that’s not quite all, Truecaller is also introducing payments, too.
The company has partnered with ICICI Bank to enable peer-to-peer payments between Truecaller users. ICICI Bank is providing the technology behind the service, Truecaller confirmed. Beyond holding the requisite licenses for the service, the bank is using India’s UPI payment system to enable it. Truecaller Pay will open to users of any bank in India, both parties said.
“India has played an important role for the innovation we bring to our users. As our product has matured, so has India as a market which made it more organic than ever to build more meaningful services on top of Truecaller,” Alan Mamedi, Truecaller CEO and co-founder said in a statement in TechCrunch
So, video calls, text messages and payments — that sounds like the basis of a mobile platform in line with services like WeChat in China, Line in Japan and Kakao in Korea.
A Truecaller representative explained to TechCrunch that the company isn’t making its service open to third parties at this point, but it is open to integrating other services where it sees a match. Likewise, the company is initially introducing these features in India but it isn’t discounting the potential to introduce similar offerings in other parts of the world.
“If we are able to find success with these kinda of services [in India], then we could replicate a similar model in other markets,” Kim Fai Kok, director of communications at Truecaller, told TechCrunch. “There are big opportunities in markets like Kenya and Nigeria, [but] we need to focus and make sure we get the first rollout right.”
Truecaller is far from the only company attacking the opportunity around mobile platforms in India, which is a key growth market for tech. The country’s online population is tipped to reach 450 million-465 million people by June 2017, according to a recent report co-authored by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, widening the audience of potential e-commerce customers. China and the U. S. currently dominate in terms of e-commerce spending, but the value of online sales in India is predicted to reach $48 billion by 2020, analyst firm Forrester claimed .
The country’s is WhatsApp’s largest single market worldwide with 200 million active users. That popularity has made it central to the service’s much-anticipated monetization plans, which may be tested in India first. On a recent visit in India, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton said the Facebook-owned company would look at opportunities around “commercial messaging” and digitals payments when the time comes.
WhatsApp aside, there is also Hike, the home-grown company recently valued at $1 billion after it raised a $175 million funding round led by WeChat maker Tencent. Hike is following WhatsApp with a focus on messaging. While it has been more aggressive expanding into connected services like games, news and stickers, Hike hasn’t revealed its active user base in India. That’s fueled speculation that the numbers aren’t particularly impressive.
That raises an interesting point about Truecaller’s move to become a platform. The company isn’t competing head-on with WhatsApp. That’s an unenviable task in India. Instead, it is offering a different first proposition — filtering pesky spam calls and messages — which could give it a leg up as it aims to find engagement with these new features. Nonetheless, with an abundance of payment options already in the market, it’ll be interesting to see how the new Truecaller service fares against the incumbents.
More wider, an alliance with Truecaller is a tacit admission from Google that it is struggling to find an audience for its latest messaging apps, Duo and Allo. Despite product quality, Google is years late to the messaging and calling app space, which WhatsApp dominates in India and many other emerging markets. Piggybacking with Truecaller is a logical move for both, but again it remains to be seen if the combination can break the network effect that has made WhatsApp, which added voice calls in 2015 and video calls last year , the world’s most successful messaging service with more than one billion active users.

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