Flutter is Google’s open source toolkit for helping developers build iOS and Android apps. It’s not necessarily a household name yet, but it’s also less than a year old and, to some degree, it’s going up against frameworks like Facebook’s popular React Native. Google’s framework, which is heavily focused around the company’s Dart programming language, […]
Being fired is difficult enough in itself. Couple that with the fact that you often have to discuss why you left your previous company in job interviews, and it often feels like adding insult to injury. While it’s perfectly normal to be frustrated with this situation, though, you shouldn’t feel hopeless — many people before […]
The Fitbit Ionic was designed to be the future of the struggling wearable maker, but so far the smartwatch has failed to catch the world on fire. As CEO James Park put it during this week’s financials, sales on the device “didn’t turn out the way that we expected it.” Of course, the wearable has […]
What’s not to love about freelance work? You can work from your favorite corner café—or from your couch—without a boss bearing down on you (in person, anyway). But freelance work—consistent freelance work—isn’t always easy to find. So we did some of the looking for you. Here are 14 companies who are looking for freelancers in […]
Industrious, the WeWork competitor that launched in 2013, is today announcing the close of an $80 million Series C funding round. The financing was co-led by Riverwood Capital and Fifth Wall Ventures. Industrious thinks of itself as a more premium version of WeWork, offering coworking space and workplace services to some 35 locations across 25 […]
dave wheeler for hbr Are academic journals impartial? While many would suggest that academic journals work for the advancement of knowledge and science, we show this is not always the case. In a recent study, we find that two international relations (IR) journals favor articles written by authors who share the journal’s institutional affiliation. We term […]
In my research, I’ve invited couples in romantic relationships to come into the laboratory and thank their partner for something—with video cameras rolling. They express gratitude for a wide variety of things, big and small: for keeping him company in the hospital during a week-long stay, for making sure to prioritize visits to the in-laws, […]
Carnegie Mellon grad Luke Skurman built the first version of Niche in 2002. Originally called College Prowler, it was an online store selling physical college guidebooks. Times changed and the site changed with it, first taking on over a $1 million in investment to ramp up with a new name and then hitting a $6.6 […]
Farwell, cashier jobs. Following the launch of Amazon’s cashless, cashier-free Amazon Go convenience store in Seattle, a startup called AiFi is emerging from stealth today to announce the availability of its own checkout-free solution for retailers. But unlike Amazon Go, AiFi claims its A.I., sensor and camera network-based system can scale from a small mom-and-pop […]
Peanut, the app referred to as “Tinder for moms” because it connects mothers by letting them swipe each other’s profiles, is launching a new community discussion feature. Called Peanut Pages, it’s meant to give mothers a better alternative to Facebook Groups, Quora and other social platforms. Since its launch almost exactly one year ago, Peanut […]
13 years ago, content marketing didn’t really exist. Now it’s the top hiring area in the creative job market, with 25% of executives planning to grow their team this year. If you work in content marketing, you probably know that its booming growth and ever-evolving ecosystem forces us to learn new skills quickly, and constantly […]
A reminder that I’m going to have Paul Vigna and Michael Casey, authors of The Truth Machine, onstage with me next week at Knotel, a co-working and event space in Manhattan. I’d love for you to come. You can RSVP here and space is limited. It’s happening Tomorrow, February 28, at 7pm and will feature a […]
It was well-known that ex-Index VC Ophelia Brown was ‘doing a fund of her own’ after she departed Robin and Saul Klein’s LocalGlobe in April, the London-based seed investment firm where she was a General Partner. However, it wasn’t until last month that Blossom Capital, as Brown’s new firm is called, broke cover. As reported […]
Local SEO forums and communities are prevalent across the internet and social media, but when you’ve got a question, it can be hard to know where to turn. On Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ a quick search will come up with plenty of options, but sifting through to find the regularly updated places that real experts […]
Alibaba’s 2018 investment spree looks set to continue after it made a push to buy Ele.me, the food delivery startup from China that it has invested in, in full. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Alibaba plans to purchase the roughly-60 percent of Ele.me that it currently doesn’t own from the other investors, which include search giant […]
We all think we have too much to do, and not enough time to do it. But you’ll never feel on top of things if you don’t have clear priorities in the first place. Start assessing your priorities by taking inventory of the work you do: Which tasks are more (or less) urgent? Which are […]
JD.com, one of China’s largest e-commerce companies, is launching a new Beijing-based accelerator program for artificial intelligence and blockchain startups. Called AI Catapult, its first batch includes six companies: Bankorus, CanYa, Bluezelle, Nuggets, Republic Protocol and Devery. In an announcement, JD.com said startups will work with its operational teams to “test real-world applications of their […]
CRO testing can be valuable because different audiences behave, well, differently. Something that works for one company may not necessarily work for another. In fact, CRO experts hate the term “best practices” because it may not actually be the best practice for you.Note: There are some times when it makes more sense to test multiple […]
While the largest deal in the history of technology continues to hit a number of speed bumps, we’re now getting into the phase of very strongly-worded publicly-issued statements between the two companies as we get closer and closer to the annual meeting of stockholders in early March. Broadcom and Qualcomm, the former of which is […]
A federal court has ruled against AT&T in a long-running case that found itself tied up in the net neutrality debate. AT&T had argued that the 2015 FCC order classifying it as a common carrier let it off the hook in a case brought against it by the FTC — which has no authority over […]
Marvel is making its first move into scripted podcasting next month with the premiere of Wolverine: The Long Night, a 10-episode series that’s launching on Stitcher Premium. Ahead of the premiere, I had a chance to speak to director Brendan Baker about some of challenges involved in bringing the famous mutant superhero from comics and […]
Fitbit, which has increasingly had to fend off competition from devices like the Apple Watch and is increasingly making moves in the healthcare space, still hasn’t seemed to nail things down quite yet as it posted weaker-than-expected financial results for its fourth quarter. The quarter was more or less a complete whiff, falling short of […]
Uber will talk about flying taxis, autonomous aerial transport and everything in between, in an industry event designed to bring together stakeholder on the subject in one place. This is the second year in a row that Uber has hosted its ‘Elevate Summit,’ and this year it’s in LA. The event fill feature a ton […]
The clicky-clacky, full keyboard devices that spring to mind when you hear “BlackBerry” might be a thing of the past… but the brand lives on. Famed gadget-unearther Evan Blass dug up a picture of an upcoming BlackBerry device said to be known as “Ghost”. For those finding themselves saying “Wait, they still make BlackBerries?”, the […]
Reports last month that rapper 50 Cent had forgotten about $7 million or so in bitcoin he owned have been given the lie by the man himself, who declares in court documents that he “has never owned, and does not now own, a bitcoin account or any bitcoin,” nor did any of his companies. The […]
YouTube today announced several new features designed to improve the live streaming experience for both creators and viewers. The most notable additions include the ability to play back a live chat after the live stream ends, and the launch of live automatic captions on videos. YouTube began offering automatic captioning back in 2009, and has […]
Andrea Lardani/EyeEm/Getty Images “We learned to take the long view, mostly because we didn’t have any other choice,” says Kate, now in her sixties and busy investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs. “Both sticking to our full-time corporate jobs or one of us becoming a full-time parent weren’t attractive options to us. We wanted […]
steven moore for hbr On February 13, 2018, the New York Times reported that Uber is planning an IPO. Uber’s value is estimated between $48 and $70 billion, despite reporting losses over the last two years. Twitter reported a loss of $79 million before its IPO, yet it commanded a valuation of $24 billion on […]
Huawei didn’t have a new phone to show at MWC this year, so it did what any good smartphone maker would: it put the Mate 10 Pro in an autonomous car and drove it directly at a dog. Of course, the promotional video was a lot more dramatic than what the company was actually demoing […]
Autonomous driving technology startup Pony.ai has become the first company to operate an autonomous ride-hailing service on public roads for public users in China. The company, just over a year-old, recently raised $112 million in a Series A round to help it accelerate its efforts, and its fleet is running a nearly two-mile route in […]
The Google Q&A feature presents a brand new minefield for business owners to navigate. Here, local SEO luminary Mike Blumenthal shows you how to use Google Q&A for businesses and explains how to counteract the bad while making the most of the good. Agencies, in-house SEOs, and small business owners all know how important Google […]
500px, the photo-sharing site that once proposed to take on Flickr and Getty, has been acquired by Visual China Group (VCG), a strategic investor in 500px via previous financings. A publicly-traded image licensing company – and China’s Getty, so to speak – bought Corbis in 2016, and is now the world’s third-largest visual content provider. […]
Amazon has renewed Lore for a second season, bringing on Sean Crouch (from The Exorcist and Numb3rs) as showrunner. Lore is an anthology series focused on the supernatural, adopted from the Lore podcast by Aaron Mahnke. The first season of Lore came out last year, using dramatic scenes, animation, narration and docu-style scenes to root […]
Circle just announced that it is acquiring U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. According to Fortune, Circle is paying $400 million for the acquisition. Poloniex has been around for years and used to be one of the biggest exchanges out there — there are now many exchanges competing with Poloniex. Circle is an interesting startup because it’s […]
Foi-se o tempo em que se acreditava que para conquistar clientes e vender mais era preciso ter dom. O nível de competição existente atualmente no mercado não permite mais argumentações baseadas em “achômetro”. O cliente quer que você mostre que tem soluções reais às necessidades dele. Justamente por isso, no mundo dos negócios, há diversas […]
You might have heard before that one of the best ways to grab a recruiter’s attention is by tailoring your resume to each position you apply to. To many people, this is an intimidating idea — after you spend so much time creating a great first resume, the thought of repeating the process for each new […]
Daniel Day/Getty Images “Sometimes, when I sit in meetings, especially ones in which people don’t seem engaged, I calculate the cost in staff time. I’ve estimated that one standard weekly meeting in my bureau—50 people sitting in a cookie-cutter conference room, looking both bored and anxious—costs around $177,000 annually, and surely this scenario occurs throughout […]
John Kuczala/Getty Images Employers are continually upping the ante on academic credentials. Nearly a third of jobs that once required only a high-school diploma now demand a four-year college degree, while one in four jobs that used to require a bachelor’s degree now require a master’s degree. Meanwhile, 75% of Americans believe that higher education […]
PhishMe, a seven year old startup that helps companies train employees to avoid phishing scams, announced today that it has been purchased by a consortium of private equity firms at a valuation of $400 million. That wording doesn’t give the exact price and a company spokesperson was careful in her response when we requested clarification. […]
When investor and entrepreneur Jalak Jobanputra first visited a blockchain conference five years ago she got goosebumps. The experienced investor had heard of cryptocurrencies but now that they had truly come into maturity she was excited. Now, five years later, she’s building her entire VC practice around blockchain and sees bright days ahead for the […]
The notch is here to stay. Two upcoming phones are reported to sport the awful, disgusting notch at the top of the screen. Huawei and Asus are following Apple and Essential down the notch hole. Neither of these phones are confirmed or officially announced yet. Both the Huawei and Asus models appeared online ahead of […]
Changes are afoot at BGF Ventures, the London-based early-stage venture fund of BGF, as three partners are departing, TechCrunch has learned. Rumours that the VC firm’s future was in flux as parent BGF reviewed its current investment strategy began surfacing in late January, but multiple sources now tell me that BGF Ventures partners Harry Briggs, […]
Automaker Daimler has a new largest shareholder – Geely Automotive chairman Li Shufu. The Geely stake, worth an estimated $9 billion, should give the Chinese automotive giant more leverage when trying to work out cross-company tech arrangements with Daimler and its sub brands including Mercedes-Benz. Daimler is already partnered up with a major automotive concern in […]
Although it would make life so much easier to have one of those fabled dream jobs you’ve known about your whole life, and eventually move through with joy, most people’s career paths aren’t so linear. In her book, Fearless and Free: How Smart Women Pivot — And Relaunch Their Careers, writer and content strategist Wendy Sachs […]
Starting a small business can involve a remarkable amount of red tape. Certificate of incorporations, sales tax licenses, publication requirements, annual franchise taxes, the list goes on. Even worse, every state in America has its own unique peculiarities. Failure to follow instructions perfectly can result in fines and possibly expropriation. And all you wanted to […]
According to KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Apple Insider, Apple could be working on a brand new pair of wireless headphones for later this year. While the company already owns Beats, those over-the-ear headphones could be sold under the Apple brand. It seems like the AirPods are a success, and the company wants to capitalize […]
Wickr, the secure communications service, is bringing new features to its free users. Already available to paying Wickr customers, users of Wickr’s “Me” service will also now be able to enjoy encrypted calling to protect against listening ears. The company is adding end-to-end encrypted calling along with encrypted and ephemeral voice messages and memo. These […]
Anyone who fondly remembers the Altair revolution probably wasn’t there. But that doesn’t stop us nerds from romanticizing one of the coolest proto-computers ever made. Originally sold as a way to interact with the magical 8800 chip back in January 2017, the Altair is one of the first usable home computers although it had no […]
Ford vehicles equipped with the automaker’s SYNC 3 infotainment system will soon have access to a new voice-powered driving assistant behind the wheel – Sygic’s new aptly named “Driving Assistant.” The feature, which works with Sygic’s GPS navigation app, is described as a “voice-controlled co-driver that helps the driver identify nearby rest-stops, restaurants, hotels” and […]
Chinese clothing manufacturer Dayang Group is making a strategic investment in InStitchu, a startup selling custom tailored suits and other menswear. At $2.5 million, the round is relatively small, but InStitchu co-CEO James Wakefield said the real reason for taking the money is to deepen the relationship with Dayang. Apparently the manufacturer was already making […]
Michigan-based startup May Mobility, which is trying to swap out current transportation options for corporate and other clients with self-driving small shuttles, has raised $11.5 million in sed funding from investors including BMW i Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures, along with existing investors. The round comes just about a year into the company’s launch, and […]
Acorns, the financial management service focused on getting low- and middle-income households to invest and save responsibly, has reached 3 million users in the United States. The company has roughly $800 million in assets under management, with accounts coming from primarily low and middle income customers across all fifty states, according to Acorns co-founder and […]
I’m not a morning person. My morning consists of waking up as late as possible and feeling personally victimized by my alarm clock. And no matter how many times I wake up to my alarm, my first thought is always, “Why are you doing this to me?!” It has caused a love-hate relationship between my […]
This morning’s Sony press conference was a real whirlwind. The company announced two new phones and the availability of its Xperia Ear Duo, still managed to wrap it all up in about an hour. All said, it was actually kind of refreshing to be in and out so quickly. There was a quick “one more […]
In a fascinating post, Brian Krebs and a group of security researchers have found a method for laundering money through expensive ebooks. It started when author Patrick Reames received an Amazon tax form saying he’d made $24,000 selling his books through Amazon’s CreateSpace, the company’s book-printing arm. His books didn’t sell nearly that many copies, […]
Just like CES has seen an influx of car manufacturers in recent years, MWC, too, is now a showcase for new in-car technology. Like in previous years, BMW once again set up shop in Barcelona this week to show off some of its most recent innovations, all of which bring together some of the current […]
Mozilla called it a day with Firefox OS for mobile handsets back in 2015 and said it would test the waters for an IoT effort using some of the same technology (and it has). But that hasn’t spelled the complete end for the tech on mobile devices. Quietly, a company called KaiOS, built on a fork […]
Sony’s embrace of smart assistants has been rocky, at best. The original Xperia Ear was an interesting exercise in the concept of carrying your AI with you, but the company has since been passed by the likes of Apple’s Siri sporting AirPods and the Google Pixel Buds. The company’s giving it another go, because it […]
Triple, the Stockholm-headquartered marketplace for local travel experiences, has acquired competitor Local Guddy for an undisclosed sum. The deal sees Local Guddy founder Emre Semercioğlu become part of the Triple team as Head of Market Growth, while I understand it was part cash, part stock. The Turkish startup had previously raised a seed round in […]
Long-time collaborators Tencent Holdings and JD.com have each bought minority stakes in Better Life, a Chinese retail conglomerate. According to a filing made on Friday by Better Life, which is traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Tencent paid 886.9 million RMB (about $140 million) for a 6% stake, while JD.com took a 5% stake for […]
Fintech startup Revolut can’t stop and won’t stop growing. The company has had an amazing month of December with a huge increase in the total volume of transactions and signups. Because of that, Revolut broke even in December for the first time ever. The company told me that it wasn’t just a lucky month and […]
When you’re a working parent, it can be helpful to have the flexibility to work remotely. But your in-office colleagues may wonder just how much you’re getting done. To help the boss and coworkers appreciate your work, provide small, clear signals that your commitment and work ethic are strong. For example, you might send emails […]
While Nokia’s former handset business forges ahead with its new device strategy under licensee HMD, Nokia itself has taken one more step to build out its business with carriers in a new wave of services. To coincide with MWC in Barcelona and a bigger step into the WiFi business, the company today announced that it […]
Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor: A peek inside Alphabet’s investing universe Raise softly and deliver a big exit With more money flowing into a shrinking number of deals, the average startup funding round is getting bigger. And it’s not by a small […]
If you were having any doubts about Samsung’s commitment to its DeX, consider them assuaged. The company introduced its smartphone docking hardware with the Galaxy S8 and has talked up a new version for every big phone release since then — and today’s big Galaxy S9 reveal is no different. We were pretty lukewarm on […]
The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a beautiful phone with a critical flaw. The fingerprint sensor is in the wrong damn spot. A phone is only as good as its usability and, to me, the S8 is crippled with its fingerprint sensor located off center. It drives me mad but Samsung finally righted the wrong with […]
Samsung’s Galaxy S9 is an update that mostly sticks to the look and feel of the previous generation device, which is probably a big reason why the company is focusing specifically on the flagship smartphone’s camera for this reveal. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ already had one of the better smartphone cameras in the industry, […]
Samsung’s AR Emoji taps creepy avatars and Disney characters to compete with Animoji 10 minutes ago by Brian Heater A ‘Black Panther’ moment 33 minutes ago by Henry Pickavet Samsung’s DeX docking station gets revamped, turning a smartphone into a trackpad 53 minutes ago by Brian Heater With the Galaxy S9, Samsung put the fingerprint sensor where it belongs […]
Nokia — in its newest iteration as a licensed brand of HMD — is a long way off from its glory days, the years when it not only set the pace for innovation in the mobile phone market, but also led it as the world’s biggest handset maker. Today, the company took its latest step […]
Alongside HMD’s big bet on reviving the legendary Nokia brand and business through a licensing deal and a new wave of handsets that it is unveiling today at MWC in Barcelona, the company also announced another interesting piece of news: it has entered a new partnership with Google, where HMD/Nokia is now a leading participant […]
Nokia’s 8110 — the distinctive ‘candy bar’ feature phone with a slider opening — was once the phone that everyone wanted but no one could afford, made popular through the Matrix film franchise. Now HMD, the company that has the license to make Nokia phones, is hoping for a hit by bringing it back. Today, […]
ZTE’s one of those workhorse smartphone companies you don’t hear much about, aside from the occasional misguided flirtation with a bizarre form factor, a la the dual-screen Axon M. But the Chinese handset manufacturer still powers away and manages to produce some solid handsets at bargain bin prices. The company hasn’t officially announced pricing on […]
I’ve been CTO of HappyFunCorp since last year, and it has been a deeply edifying experience. Everything people told me was mostly true: I write less code; I go to more meetings, and turn up in more conference calls; I think more strategically, and less tactically; my time is spent in a more fragmented and […]
Apple told Reuters that the company had to comply with Chinese authorities and move iCloud data to Chinese data centers. Not everyone’s data is moving to China. This is only going to apply to residents of mainland China who chose China as their main country when they created their Apple account (not Hong Kong, Macau […]
Bike-sharing startup GoBee Bike is giving up and shutting down in all French cities where it operates. GoBee Bike operates just like Chinese giants Ofo and Mobike. You open the app, you find a bike on the map and you unlock it by scanning a QR code. Once you’re done, you lock it again and […]
LG today announced an updated version of the V30 smartphone and it comes with a supercharged camera powered by a third-party AI system. LG turned to EyeEm to add new features to the camera. Now, thanks to the EyeEm platform, the LG V30S ThinQ and soon the original V30 can automatically detect the subject of […]
If coffee be the food of innovation, pour on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. And if you wish to pour me coffee, do so from the Rite Press, a clever hack on the traditional French press that adds a few features that even high-end models don’t […]
Can programming be a craft? I was thinking about this as I was reading Matthew Crawford’s excellent book The World Beyond Your Head. Much like Crawford’s earlier work Shop Class as Soulcraft, he argues that craftsmanship is an activity that doesn’t just provide us with satisfaction, but also makes us fundamentally human by enchanting us […]
[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. At long last, after many predictions and even a private filing, Dropbox dropped its S-1 today. The filing marks the public beginning of the end of Dropbox’s life as a private company. Dropbox is going public! […]
According to a number of reports today, the next version of Android would include a “dark mode” – something that’s been a long-time feature request from those who prefer the dark-themed and power saving option that’s already available in apps like YouTube and Twitter. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. News that Android was getting its […]
A big part of the FCC’s mandate is to ensure broadband is rolled out all over the country, and it issues regular reports along those lines — but there’s nothing presenting information visually to get the point across. A new official map of broadband access based on FCC data lets you browse block by block […]
If you’re worried about someone finding out what you’re pointing your browser at, there are plenty of options for keeping it secret, with varying levels of difficulty and effectiveness. Veil takes things further than perhaps any other anonymous browsing method by masking the page you’re viewing not just from would-be attackers, but from your own […]
Monique Maddy Contributor Monique Maddy has spent her career as a technology entrepreneur working in emerging markets, including Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is currently founder and CEO of Ezuza, a mobile payments company located in Mexico. Long gone are the days when Africa was disparagingly regarded as the White Man’s Burden. Today, Africa is […]
It’s official, the Dropbox IPO filing is here. Going public is a huge milestone for Dropbox and has been one of the most anticipated tech IPOs for several years now. We knew that it had already filed confidentially, but the company has now unveiled its filing, meaning the actual IPO is likely very soon, probably […]
[embedded content] You’ll soon be able to trap Ghostbusters ghosts in augmented reality à la Pokémon Go. A short demo of the game Ghostbusters World was showcased at Google’s MWC booth, highlighting functionality made possible by the public release of Google’s ARCore augmented reality platform. Details are pretty slim for a wide release date other […]
In the race for in-ear AI, Apple has the clear advantage despite the fact that their intelligent assistant is one of the dumbest of the bunch. Yesterday, reports emerged that Apple was working on a pair of follow-ups to its Airpods headphones that could bring them always-on Siri functionality as well as a splash-proof design. As […]
Eden, the office management and tech support platform, has today announced the acquisition of OrgOrg, a social network for office managers to recommend, discuss, and review vendors and products. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eden founder and CEO Joe DuBey explained to TechCrunch that a growing number of on-boarding clients said that […]
Local news sites Gothamist, LAist and DCist are coming back from the dead. Their assets (including story archives) have been acquired by three public radio companies — WNYC in New York, KPCC in Southern California and WAMU in Washington, D.C. According to the acquisition announcement, the deal comes after a competitive sale process, and it […]
French startup Ledger is making some of the most secure cryptocurrency hardware wallets out there. But the company’s apps aren’t that great. That’s why the company announced that Ledger has been working on brand new native apps for all desktop and mobile platforms. Right now, Ledger relies on Google Chrome for its desktop apps. At […]
Mário Tavares / EyeEm/Getty Images We all want to be fearless public speakers. We dream of confidently striding onto the stage to give a speech or presentation, breaking the ice with the perfect joke, captivating the audience with compelling stories, handling the most difficult questions with ease, and exiting to cheers and applause. But the […]
After Microsoft signed a deal to test Windows 10 on Xiaomi devices in 2015 and then Xiaomi bought a trove of patents to help run other Microsoft services on its devices in 2016, today the two companies announced another chapter in its collaboration. Xiaomi and Microsoft have signed a Strategic Framework Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to […]
Tesla expects to sell 100,000 electric vehicles in 2018. But electric vehicles don’t make much sense unless chargers are easily accessible and convenient. That’s why Tesla is introducing the Workplace Charging program. It will allow offices and business to apply for a Wall Connector to be installed in the company garage or parking lot. And, […]
If you have a new Pixel phone, you may have been able to play with Google’s AR Stickers that brought Star Wars and Stranger Things into the real world. With ARCore’s launch today, developers are now able to put their own creations into the Play Store and users with phones left out of the preview […]
Google has adopted a novel way to circumvent China’s internet censorship system, which continues to block its services, after it partnered directly with three OEMs to bring its augmented reality service to the country. ARCore, the company’s augmented reality SDK for Android, launched in full today following its announcement in November. Google says there are 100 […]
Alongside news of Google Assistant’s forthcoming multilingual support and the addition of more languages this year, Google also announced this morning its smart assistant would soon be gaining two new features: Routines and location-based reminders. Google has been promising Routines were in the works for some time. The feature, which lets Google Assistant users string […]
TOSHINORI TARUI/Getty Images Do you believe that sustainability is important for your company, but that it’s “someone else’s problem?” You aren’t alone; while most organizations talk the talk of sustainability — doing things like integrating environmental and societal concerns into their business models — very few walk the walk. Unsurprisingly, carbon emissions by the world’s largest companies […]
Kenneth Andersson for HBR When I was 25, during my annual review my (male) boss confirmed lots of positive things, such as how I exceeded my $26 million goal in sales. But he ended the meeting with his one big negative: “You need to smile more.” I was stunned. He explained that all the senior […]
Next Story Google Assistant will support over 30 languages by year-end, become multilingual Writer-director Alex Garland has said that his adaptation of Annihilation isn’t a straightforward retelling of the book — instead, he said, it’s “true to my subjective response to the novel.” That’s a fair warning: The movie’s details don’t really match the book, which was […]
Discord, the voice and text chat app for gamers, is today announcing a new partnership with a number of eSports teams for the launch of Discord Verified Servers. Verified servers ensure that users know they’re communicating with an official source, similar to verified accounts on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Alongside […]
[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the full gang was in town, with Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm all back in the podcast studio. The trio was joined by Hilary Gosher, a managing director at Insight Venture Partners who helped […]
Is it better to work from home or at an office? A recent study has found that those working from home tend not only to be more satisfied with their jobs but that they’re also more productive and more engaged more likely to stick with the job. Working from home is not perfect in every way […]
You want a new job. And to increase your chances of snagging one, you’re applying to many, a move that can get confusing quickly if you don’t stay organized. After all, trying to remember if you’ve followed up on one application is tough enough — it might seem almost impossible with six! Luckily, staying organized […]
At Glassdoor, one of the most common questions we get from employers is, “How do I become a Best Place to Work?” The coveted award is a decade old and honors only the top 100 companies in the US (along with the UK, Canada, France, and Germany). Needless to say, the companies whose employees believe in […]
Michael Banks/Getty Images Advancement toward gender equality at work has slowed since the 1990s for three major reasons: people’s attitudes stopped becoming more gender egalitarian, occupations stopped gender integrating, and the gender wage gap began decreasing at slower rates. Sociologist Paula England has called this phenomenon an “uneven and stalled” gender revolution, and there have been dozens […]
“Hold on, let me just confirm the solution for you,” the service rep responds as she scrambles to look up the answer to a customer’s question. It’s the corporate equivalent of a retail employee wandering aimlessly down each aisle when you ask where a certain product is, like you couldn’t have done that yourself. Customers […]
Password management service 1Password has a neat new feature that lets users check whether a password they’re thinking of using has already been breached. At which point it will suggest they pick another. This is in addition to the more usual password strength indicator bar that tries to encourage web users to improve their security […]
WeChat is far and away the biggest messaging platform in China at the moment, and that is helping to drive a push among the smaller players to get together for better scale. Today, Momo, the Chinese location-based social networking app that has more recently made a big push into dating services and is traded on […]
Opera Max lives on after Samsung acquired the mobile browser to save it from oblivion. The browser was one of the first data-friendly mobile browsers and it later added privacy-focused settings, including safeguards against insecure WiFi connections and a VPN. The popular app clocked up more than 500,000 installs, but that didn’t stop parent company Opera […]
When work is intense, it’s easy to beat yourself up for letting things slip at the office or at home. But doing so can make the stress worse. Have self-compassion instead: Accept that you’re in an acute period of work stress and notice — don’t suppress or deny — your emotions. Assigning a word to […]
Nissan Motor and DeNA announced today that field tests of Easy Ride, the self-driving taxi service they developed together, will begin next month in Japan. This means that Nissan and DeNA now rank among Uber, Lyft, GM, Didi Chuxing and other companies pioneering self-driving taxi pilots, with the goal of launching commercially within the next […]
Angry Birds maker Rovio’s stock price tanked cratered after their latest quarterly earnings report painted a dismal future for the game maker. The stock is down 50 percent after the company sent investors a warning in their latest earnings report that revenues were likely to suffer in 2018. Despite a strong over reliance on the Angry […]
Since October, emergency responders in Elk Grove and Sacramento County, California have received over 1,600 false alarm 911 calls coming from an Apple repair and refurbishing site in the area. It’s not clear if the calls are coming from Apple’s iPhones or Watches but each time a call originates out of the Elk Grove facility, […]
Split announced this morning that it’s raised $17 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Accel Partners and new investor Harmony Partners. Split has now raised a total of $26.8 million. The startup allows companies to test out new features and deliver them in a targeted […]
Snap’s stock investors haven’t made much money since the company went public last year, but CEO Evan Spiegel still got a hefty payday. According to an SEC filing, he was granted an RSU of 37,447,817, which vested at the time of the IPO. In other words, that was worth nearly $636.6 million. His salary for […]
Jetta Productions/Walter Hodges/Getty Images I spend much of my time with senior executives from organizations in, shall we say, not the most glamorous fields: community banks, electrical distributors, heartland manufacturers, and, perhaps least glamorous of all, insurance companies. These executives are rightly proud of what their organizations do, and they can get people like me […]
Japan, one of the world’s richest business markets, once had a reputation as a difficult business environment for some foreign companies. So why have many of the world’s best-known life science companies successfully expanded into Japan in recent years? From Finland to Israel, from Australia to Portugal, from the U.S. to the U.K, small and large corporations […]
Similar to the way people insure their cars, houses and lives, slave-owners would sometimes insure their slaves. Fearful of not getting their money’s worth from their slaves, owners would sometimes take out insurance policies on them. In the 1800s, for example, some slave-owners who rented out their slaves would insure them so that, in the […]
Robotics is an incredibly demanding field because robots demand the best of everything technology has to offer, from machine learning, to sensors and GPUs, to materials technology and of course the “robot” itself. For that reason, there is no better subject for one of TechCrunch’s single-day, single-topic events, and we’re excited to announce that TechCrunch […]
As the streetwear and sneaker industry continues to explode in popularity we’re seeing more and more startups popping up to service the industry, all from slightly different angles. Meet Bump, a peer-to-peer take on a streetwear marketplace. Founded six months ago in the U.K and now part of Y Combinator’s Winter ’18 batch, the startup […]
Facebook is looking to clean up and clarify the way advertisers measure their campaign performance. Over the past couple of years, the company has had to acknowledge multiple mistakes in its ad metrics. Last fall, researchers even pointed out that Facebook’s purported reach was greater than the US Census population in every state. So making […]
At this point, if you haven’t accepted the celebrity influence of the Kardashian/Jenner machine, you probably haven’t been paying attention to pop culture at large. Nevertheless, when a reality star can seemingly affect the value of your publicly-traded tech company, you’re in a bit of trouble. Yesterday, Kylie Jenner tweeted a pretty brutal takedown of Snapchat […]
Eight years after Amazon snatched up the daily deals site Woot!, the retailer is now leveraging the site to serve as another perk for Prime members. Woot! this morning announced that it will begin offering free shipping on purchases from its site to all Amazon Prime members. Woot!, which was founded in 2004, is no […]
French startup Snips is announcing two things for its voice assistant SDK. First, the company is showing off an interesting use case in Nuremberg with a Snips-powered voice assistant in a car. Second, you can now build voice assistants in German. Snips isn’t technically competing with Alexa Voice Service or Google Assistant SDK as they’re not designed […]
MyBagCheck is a clever system that ensures that you’ll be able to spend that extra few hours in a foreign city without having to lug around fifty pounds of Samsonite. The founder, Micah B. Lewis, created the app to allow people who have bags to get those bags picked up and stored during the day, […]
Rich Communication Services (RCS) is basically the standard for the next generation of text messaging, with apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE and others now offering features that go far beyond the standard SMS-based messaging apps that tend to ship with your phone — unless, of course, you are an Apple and iMessage user. Read […]
