If your workplace is toxic, can you change it? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Nicholas Pearce, an associate professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. They talk through how to transform a toxic culture, whether you’re […]
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A group of public radio companies acquires podcast app Pocket Casts
NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American Life announced today that they’ve acquired Pocket Casts, a podcast app created by Australian developer Shifty Jelly. That might sound like a lot of owners for one app, but the idea is to run Pocket Casts as a joint venture. And while former iHeartRadio executive Owen Grover […]
You should change your Twitter password right now
Yes, it’s that time again — password changing time. On Thursday, Twitter revealed that a bug caused the platform to store user passwords in unmasked form. Normally, sensitive personal data like passwords would be stored in hashed form using a mix of letters and numbers to protect the content of the password itself. In this […]
Wear OS gets more Google Assistant features ahead of I/O
I/O doesn’t actually kick off until next Tuesday, but Google’s been steadily trickling out news this week. Perhaps it’s priming the pump for next week’s big event, or maybe the company just had more news than it could cram into a couple of keynotes. Whatever the case, today brought some new additions to the wearable […]
New York City report pins millions in rent hikes on Airbnb
A report from the New York City Comptroller’s office asserts that New York residents are paying hundreds of millions in extra rent linked to the effects of Airbnb. Naturally, the company bitterly rejects these findings. The report, which you can read here, is fairly straightforward. It looks at hundreds of neighborhoods and their various demographics […]
Updated Quick Start for Tableau Server on the AWS Cloud Supports Linux
Tableau Server is an online solution for sharing, distributing, and collaborating on business intelligence content created in Tableau. With Tableau Server, you can create workbooks and views, dashboards, and data sources in Tableau Desktop, and publish this content to the server. This Quick Start uses AWS CloudFormation templates to install one of the following architectures: […]
Instagram quietly launches payments for commerce
Get ready to shop the ‘Gram. Instagram just stealthily added a native payments feature to its app for some users. It lets you register a debit or credit card as part of a profile, set up a security pin, then start buying things without ever leaving Instagram. Not having to leave for a separate website […]
Scaleway launches updated cloud servers for $2.40 per month
French cloud hosting company Scaleway announced new servers for its cloud offering. While the company’s offering was already quite cheap, Scaleway is going one step further with prices starting at €1.99 per month (around $2.40 per month). For this price, you get an x86 server with 1 core, 1GB of RAM, 25GB of SSD, 100Mbit/s […]
Freeda raises $10 million for its new media brand for women
Italian startup Freeda Media is raising a $10 million Series A round led by Alven Capital. U-Start and business angels are also participating in the round. Freeda Media runs the popular Freeda Facebook page. With nearly 1.4 million likes, the page has an impressive reach. 24 million unique users see Freeda content every month in […]
NASA’s Insight Mars lander will gaze (and drill) into the depths of the Red Planet
NASA’s latest mission to Mars, Insight, is set to launch early Saturday morning in pursuit of a number of historic firsts in space travel and planetology. The lander’s instruments will probe the surface of the planet and monitor its seismic activity with unprecedented precision, while a pair of diminutive cubesats riding shotgun will test the […]
Chrome on desktop now mutes annoying autoplays by learning from your behavior
There’s little that’s more annoying on the web than videos that start playing automatically and with their volume up. Over the course of the last few years, Chrome and other browser vendors have started to combat this, but for the most part, those solutions relied on the user explicitly taking action. Now, following the launch […]
Twitter is moving a portion of its infrastructure to Google Cloud
Twitter today announced a new collaboration with Google that will see it moving a portion of infrastructure to Google’s Cloud Platform. The move is another high-profile win for Google in the cloud computing market, following its recent deal with Fitbit. Specifically, Twitter says it’s moving its cold data storage and its flexible compute Hadoop clusters – […]
Applications still open for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF ’18
Could your startup use $100,000? Then drop whatever you’re doing and apply to compete in Startup Battlefield while you still can. Applications are still open to qualifying companies — meaning you haven’t yet launched to the public and have received little to no press coverage. Startup Battlefield takes place at Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September […]
How to Run a Meeting Without Talking Too Much
Stella/Getty Images Have you ever left a meeting feeling that you dominated the whole thing — and not in a good way? You talked a lot, and in the end, you felt that nobody else had enough time to speak. This is a bad dynamic for several reasons. People don’t want to attend meetings that are […]
To Enlist Physicians in Reducing Costs, Show Them the Costs
PM Images/Getty Images In a recent speech, Alex Azar, the U.S. secretary of health and human services, said, “There is no more powerful force than an informed consumer.” What about an informed provider? If health systems are truly going to improve the value of the care they deliver, they need to enlist doctors in the […]
Amazon halts Seattle expansion over city tax proposal
Even as Amazon continues to grow at a staggering rate, it is pumping the brakes on its long-planned hometown expansion. The retail giant threw down the gauntlet this week when it announced that it would stop construction on a new building because of a proposed city tax. The new law is designed to address Seattle’s […]
Google’s Advanced Protection program now allows access from Apple’s mobile apps, too
Last October, Google launched its Advanced Protection Program for users who want to ensure the highest degree of protection for the data they store in services Gmail, Google Calendar and Drive. Users who need that kind of protection can opt into this program, but in return, they have to use security keys for the 2-step […]
Washé raises $3.5 million for its on-demand car washing service and biz platform
Another startup wants to make on-demand car washing work, where others have failed. Washé, a Boca Raton-based service for on-demand washes, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to continue to grow its business, which involves a mobile app consumers use to connect with Washé’s network of around 1,000 licensed and insured car washing professionals. […]
Amazon opens up in-skill purchases to all Alexa developers
Amazon today launched in-skill purchasing to all Alexa developers. That means developers have a way to generate revenue from their voice applications on Alexa-powered devices, like Amazon’s Echo speakers. For example, developers could charge for additional packs to go along with their voice-based games, or offer other premium content to expand their free voice app […]
18 of the Top 20 Tech Companies Are in the Western U.S. and Eastern China. Can Anywhere Else Catch Up?
CliqueImages/Getty Images Today’s digital world is organized around two centers of gravity: the U.S. West Coast and the east coast of China. These gold coasts are home to nine of the top 10, and 18 of the top 20, internet companies, as measured by market capitalization. The leading companies in online search, social media, and e-commerce […]
How Much Should You Charge for a Speech?
piyush ghedia/Getty Images Many professionals would love to do more speaking at conferences and conventions. But when the invitation comes, they’re often paralyzed by money: Is it appropriate to ask for some? And if so, how much? I’m a paid keynote speaker who delivers 30–50 talks per year. I’ve also interviewed folks about how to […]
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Watch these robotic soccer players play a nail-biter of a match
As a hater of all sports I am particularly excited about the imminent replacement of humans with robots in soccer. If this exciting match, the Standard Platform League (SPL) final of the German Open featuring the Nao-Team HTWK vs. Nao Devils, is any indication the future is going to be great. The robots are all […]
Reports of institutional crypto desks have been greatly exaggerated
Todays news that Goldman Sachs is opening a Bitcoin trading desk is good news for the crypto economy as a whole. But is it a real shift in perception for crypto at big institutions? Not likely, said David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. “If you look closely at the reports, they […]
Datadog provides visibility into Kubernetes apps with new container map
As companies turn increasingly to containerization, it creates challenges in terms of monitoring each individual container and the impact on the underlying application. This is particularly difficult because of the ephemeral nature of containers, which can exist for a very short time. Datadog introduced a container map product today that could help by bringing visualization […]
Amazon DynamoDB Encryption Client Is Now Available in Python
The Amazon DynamoDB Encryption Client: Is designed especially for DynamoDB applications Includes secure encryption and signing Provides interoperable language implementations in Java and Python Uses cryptographic materials from any source Does not require AWS or any AWS Service If you have questions about using the DynamoDB Encryption Client, start a new thread on the AWS […]
Google Assistant now works with 5,000 smart home devices
With I/O just a matter of days away, Google’s gone on the offensive with Assistant. In a blog post this morning, the company is talking up its smart home play in a major way, noting an admitted pretty impressive bump in hardware compatibility. By its count, the number of compatible devices recently hit the 5,000 […]
What Airbnb and Strava Know About Building Emotional Connections with Customers
twomeows/Getty Images One of our clients, let us call it AgriCo, recently came to us with a problem: It had created an online platform for sourcing farming supplies to remote farms. The platform meant that it was easier, more convenient, and faster for farmers to get what they needed, whether it was a part for […]
Power Ledger deploys first blockchain-based P2P energy trading system in Chicago
When blockchain first appeared, especially Ethereuem’s innovation of ‘smart contracts’, a number of people posited that it could be used to trade energy between one source and another, such as power supplies or batteries. The idea would be to enable consumers to buy and sell renewable energy directly between one another, in a peer-to-peer (P2P) […]
Verisart brings blockchain certification to the global art auction market
Almost three years ago Verisart appeared on the scene with an unusual idea. It was going to use the immutability of blockchain to create certification to the fine art market. To literally verify and artwork was what it claimed to be. While the idea seemed a good one, the execution was probably going to be […]
Wedding startup Zola just received a lavish gift: $100 million in fresh funding
Zola, a fast-growing company that invites newly engaged couples to register their guests, shop from 600 different brands, and create customizable checklists, has itself received something a bit extravagant: $100 million in Series D funding. Earlier investor Comcast Ventures led the round, which also included new investors NBCUniversal and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. The five-year-old, […]
Salesforce Ventures earmarks $100M to invest in Canadian enterprise cloud startups
After committing $2 billion towards expanding operations north of the border in Canada in February, Salesforce is now doubling down on startups in the country. Salesforce Ventures, the company’s investment arm, today announced the Trailblazer Fund, earmarking $100 million to invest in startups out of Canada, with a special focus on those working in enterprise cloud computing. […]
SoundHound has raised a big $100M round to take on Alexa and Google Assistant
As SoundHound looks to leverage its ten-plus years of experience and data to create a voice recognition tool that companies can bake into any platform, it’s raising another big $100 million round of funding to try to make its Houndify platform a third neutral option compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. While Amazon works to […]
HTC confirms its newest flagship smartphone will arrive May 23
Perennial smartphone struggler HTC has revealed its newest smartphone — the U12/U12+ — will launch on May 23. The big spoiler from the company is that the phone will include… components. That isn’t exactly an informative teaser, but we do actually have a flavor for what HTC will bring to market. Serial leaker Evan Blass, […]
Early-bird pricing for TC Tel Aviv ends in two weeks
The first-ever TechCrunch conference in Tel Aviv is just slightly more than a month away, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring this day-long intensive event focused on mobility to one of the fastest growing startup ecosystems in the world. TechCrunch Tel Aviv takes place on June 7, 2018, and you have exactly two […]
Ariella Grinberg from General Motors joins un in Tel Aviv
This year’s TechCrunch event in Tel Aviv is all about mobility and everything around it, from autonomous vehicles, to sensors, drones and security. And that’s including traditional car manufacturers in our agenda was important. I’m happy to announce that Ariella Grinberg from General Motors is going to join us at our event. Ariella Grinberg in Innovation […]
Resolve a Turf War by Being Patient and Open-Minded
If you and a colleague are in a tug-of-war over who owns a project or who gets to decide how to use your team’s budget, you might feel frustrated or threatened. But getting angry won’t help you reach a resolution. Forget the win-lose paradigm; approach the situation by focusing on a common goal. Try to […]
Introducing Amazon EC2 Fleet
You can create an EC2 Fleet specification defining target capacity, which EC2 instance types work for you, and how much of your fleet should be filled using On-Demand, RI and Spot purchase models. You can also indicate whether EC2 Fleet should take into account the number of cores and amount of memory on each instance […]
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics Increases Application Limits
We have increased the maximum row size allowed in Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics applications from 50KB to 512KB, so you can process and analyze streams with hundreds of columns. We have also increased the maximum code size of Kinesis Data Analytics applications from 50KB to 100KB, allowing several hundreds of SQL statements in an application.
Elon Musk offers more detail about Tesla’s ridesharing network
On Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shed some light on the company’s ambitions to launch an autonomous vehicle ridesharing network. The short answer is that, from a technical standpoint, Tesla will be ready by the end of next year, Musk said. It’s not yet clear, however, when Tesla would actually […]
Amazon WorkSpaces is now available in the Canada Region
Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution which runs on AWS. With WorkSpaces, you can provision virtual, cloud-based desktops for your users, providing them access to the documents, applications, and resources they need, anywhere, anytime, from any supported device. You can quickly add or remove WorkSpaces to meet the needs of your dynamic […]
Columbus Collaboratory’s Jeff Schmidt talks about the future of security
In this episode of Technotopia I talk to Jeff Schmidt of the Columbus Collaboratory. He is well-versed in the future of security and our conversation ranged from the rise of the midwest to the future of cyberattacks. The Columbus Collaboratory, a unique think tank dedicated to building security and system solutions for major clients. It’s […]
Facebook tool warns developers of phishing attacks dangling lookalike domains
Phishing seems like a problem that will be here for the long haul, so I welcome any tools to combat it with open arms. Today Facebook announced one: a service for domain owners or concerned users that watches for sketchy versions of web addresses that might indicate a phishing attempt in the offing. The developer […]
Fitbit beats revenue expectations slightly, but tracker sales are still down
Fitbit scored a small coup on earnings this week, ever so slightly beating revenue expectations for the quarter. The company pulled in $247.9 million, up over Wall Street’s expected $247.3 million. Of course, that’s still a notable drop from this time last year, when the company pulled in $298.9 million. The numbers are down as […]
Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables Regional Expansion
Global tables builds upon the global footprint of DynamoDB to provide you a fully managed, multi-region, multi-master database. It enables you to replicate table updates automatically across the AWS Regions you select. Global tables can be set up with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console or by using the AWS SDK. There […]
Nintendo’s new president aims to build a billion-dollar mobile gaming business
It’s a time of optimism and transition at Nintendo, where brisk sales of the Switch have bolstered its bottom line and new leadership signals a fresh approach to the market. Shuntaro Furukawa, the new president, told the Nikkei that one of his plans is to pursue mobile gaming with more vigor, aiming to build it […]
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Supports New Minor Versions 9.6.6, 9.5.10, 9.4.15, and 9.3.20 in AWS GovCloud (US)
We have updated Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to support PostgreSQL minor versions 9.6.6, 9.5.10, 9.4.15, and 9.3.20 in AWS GovCloud (US). This release fixes three PostgreSQL security vulnerabilities and contains additional bug fixes and improvements. With this update, we have also added support for the ‘orafce’ extension to emulate a subset of common functions and […]
AWS Config Adds Support for AWS X-Ray
You can now record configuration changes to AWS X-Ray using AWS Config. AWS X-Ray helps developers analyze and debug production-level distributed applications, such as those built using a microservices architecture. With X-Ray, you can understand how your application and its underlying services are functioning to identify and troubleshoot performance issues and errors.
Tesla beats expectations
Tesla reported its Q1 2018 earnings today, posting adjusted losses of $3.35 per share with revenues on $3.32 billion. This is beat, as analysts expected Tesla to report a loss of $3.48 a share with revenues of $3.22 billion. In September 2017, Tesla stock hit a record high of $389.61 a share. At market close […]
Spotify misses on revenue in first earnings report with 170M users
In Spotify’s first ever earnings report, the streaming music came up short, pulling in $1.36 billion revenue That’s compared to $1.4 billion in revenue and an adjusted EPS loss of $0.34. Spotify hit 170 million monthly active users, up 6.9 percent from 159 million in Q4 2017 and upWe finished the quarter with 170 million […]
BuzzFeed built its own editing tool for short, meme-y videos
Although the “pivot to video” has been notoriously challenging for most publishers, they can’t exactly give up on video. In fact, BuzzFeed has been ramping up production with a new editing tool called Vidder. Vidder was created Senior Product Designer Elaine Dunlop and Senior Software Engineer Joseph Bergen. Dunlop recalled talking to Bergen more than […]
Facebook teases major VR display upgrades with Oculus ‘Half Dome’ prototype
For the last couple years the hardware upgrades that VR headsets have been getting have been pretty stale, there might be a resolution bump or the addition of eye-tracking or new controllers, but most of the advances have seemed to be on the software side. Facebook is focusing on some more fundamental display issues in […]
Google revamps its Google Maps developer platform
Google is launching a major update to its Google Maps API platform for developers today — and it’s also giving it a new name: the Google Maps Platform. This is one of the biggest changes to the platform in recent years and it’ll greatly simplify the Google Maps developer offerings and how Google charges for […]
New AWS Service Catalog Connector for ServiceNow Simplifies Cloud Provisioning
AWS Service Catalog, used by enterprises, system integrators, and managed service providers to organize, govern, and provision cloud resources on AWS, is announcing the AWS Service Catalog Connector for ServiceNow. The connector allows you to use your existing AWS Service Catalog configuration, including curated products, portfolios, constraints, and tagging, and expose this to your ServiceNow […]
Stories are about to surpass feed sharing. Now what?
We’re at the cusp of the visual communication era. Stories creation and consumption is up 842 percent since early 2016, according to consulting firm Block Party. Nearly a billion accounts across Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger now create and watch these vertical, ephemeral slideshows. And yesterday, Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox showed a […]
Soft Robotics raises $20 million to expand operations
Massachusetts-based Soft Robotics announced this week that it’s raised $20 million in funding, courtesy of Scale Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, Honeywell Ventures and Tekfen Ventures, along with existing investors like robotics giant, ABB. The round follows a $5 million Series A the company closed back in late-2015. The investment interest is pretty clear on this […]
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Facebook animates photo-realistic avatars to mimic VR users’ faces
Facebook wants you to look and move like you in VR, even if you’ve got a headset strapped to your face in the real world. That’s why its building a new technology that uses a photo to map someone’s face into VR, and then sensors to detect facial expressions and movements to animate that avatar […]
Facebook engineer and ‘professional stalker’ reportedly fired over creepy Tinder messages
There’s no shortage of Facebook news this week on account of F8, but this creepy Facebook-adjacent event with a good outcome seems worth noting. An engineer accused of abusing his access to data at the company in Tinder messages has been fired, NBC News reported. The issue arose over the weekend: Jackie Stokes, founder of […]
Facebook’s open source Go bot can now beat professional players
Go is the go-to game for machine learning researchers. It’s what Google’s DeepMind team famously used to show off its algorithms and Facebook, too, recently announced that it was building a Go bot of its own. As the team announced at the company’s F8 developer conference today, the ELF OpenGo bot has now achieved professional […]
Only 24 hours left on Disrupt SF super early-bird ticket prices
The final 24-hour shot clock is ticking, startup fans. That means you have one last day to get the best pricing on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018, which takes place September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. Come May 3, prices increase and your chance to save up to $1,800 disappears. Don’t miss your shot. […]
Facebook is using your Instagram photos to train its image recognition AI
In the race to continue building more sophisticated AI deep learning models, Facebook has a secret weapon, billions of images on Instagram. In research that the company is presenting today at F8, Facebook details how it took what amounted to billions of public Instagram photos that had been annotated by users with hashtags and has used […]
Facebook announces PyTorch 1.0, a more unified AI framework
Though Facebook’s focus on Day 1 of its F8 conference centered on the company’s recent struggles and their relationship with the phrase “taking broader responsibility,” Day 2 shifted most of the pizazz to the technical advances its giant team has made over the past year. Today, the company announced PyTorch 1.0, a new iteration of […]
Mindfulness as a Management Technique Goes Back to at Least the 1970s
Kwanchai Lerttanapunyaporn / EyeEm/Getty Images Mindfulness is now seen as a crucial skill in business. Meditation practices have the capacity to calm the mind, relax the body, boost resilience, and even increase situational awareness. The study of mindfulness — often defined as paying attention, nonjudgmentally and on purpose — is a regular part of the […]
The Handmaid’s Tale gets greenlight for season 3
The Handmaid’s Tale, America’s favorite dystopian drama, will return for a third season. Hulu announced the news this morning on the heels of revealing it has hit 20 million subscribers for its streaming service. The second season of The Handmaid’s Tale is currently airing on Hulu, with the third episode to available today. The series […]
Philo and Pandora are offering a discounted, but temporary, 3-month bundle of TV and music
It seems like Hulu and Spotify had the right idea, when they launched a discounted package last month that combined both of their services. Now, the low-cost streaming service Philo is doing the same – but not with Spotify. Instead, Philo and Pandora are teaming up on a combo deal of their own: $16 per […]
Austin Russell is speaking at TechCrunch’s Tel Aviv event on Mobility
TechCrunch is coming to Tel Aviv, Israel to unpack the revolution that is coming in Mobility. So we’re excited to announce that a pioneer of the space, Austin Russell, will be speaking. Austin Russell is an accomplished applied physicist, and founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies, Inc. He founded the company in 2012 with a […]
MoviePass brings back ‘unlimited’ movie subscription plan
It’s hard to keep track with what MoviePass is doing these days, but here’s trying. Today, MoviePass has brought back its nearly all-you-can-watch monthly movie subscription, Variety reports. With its original plan, subscribers can watch up to one movie a day, every day. This comes after MoviePass removed this subscription last month in favor for […]
Massage-on-demand company, Soothe, raises $31 million
The massage-on-demand service Soothe seems to be rubbing investors the right way with the close of a new $31 million round of funding. The Series C round from late stage and growth capital investment firm, The Riverside Company, caps a busy first quarter for the massage service. It also relocated from Los Angeles to Las […]
SALT Lending offers liquidity for cryptocurrency holders
SALT Lending has issued $40 million in asset-backed loans that are aimed at investors in cryptocurrencies to give them a bit of liquidity without the need to sell off assets. The company rolled out its first loans late in 2017 after two years spent developing the technology to make the loans work. SALT Lending relies on […]
Google will start investing in early-stage startups that use the Assistant
Google is betting big on the Assistant ecosystem and it’s now putting its money where its mouth is. As the company announced today, it’s launching a new program that will provide investment capital and other resources to early-stage startups that build applications in the Google Assistant ecosystem. Typically, companies announce these kind of program to […]
Fusion Fund raises a second $85M fund for heavily technical investing
While the mid 2010s were filled with massive financing rounds for companies looking to shift business models like Instacart, Uber, and others along those lines, today’s hottest sector is a more technical one: artificial intelligence. That’s required a different approach to building companies. As tools become more and more powerful, and frameworks like TensorFlow become […]
Tyson Food’s investment arm backs another lab-grown meat manufacturer
The venture investment arm of massive meat manufacturer Tyson Foods is continuing its push into potential alternative methods of poultry production with a new investment in the Israeli startup Future Meat Technologies. The backer of companies like the plant-based protein-maker Beyond Meat, and cultured-meat company Memphis Meats, Tyson Ventures’ latest investment is also tackling technology development to create mass […]
Lyft commits $1.5 million to help people who lack access to transportation
Lyft is committing $1.5 million to its Relief Rides program. The idea has historically been to better support people during times of crisis, such as natural disasters or other emergency situations. Now, Lyft is expanding its reach to help people who many need rides to job interviews or medical appointments. One of the partners Lyft […]
Upbound grabs $9 M Series A to automate multi-cloud management
Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration tool, does a great job of managing a single cluster, but Upbound, a new Seattle-based startup wants to extend this ability to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters across multi-cloud environment. It’s a growing requirement as companies deploy ever-larger numbers of clusters and choose a multi-vendor approach to cloud infrastructure services. […]
Learning Is a Learned Behavior. Here’s How to Get Better at It.
cintascotch/Getty Images Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye color, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they’re not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it? And that’s why many people tend […]
What Marketers Should Know About Personality-Based Marketing
Gunther Kleinert / EyeEm/Getty Images Communicators and marketers can now adopt a personalized approach to their work, ideally one based on behavioral science. But the execution lags behind the science while the claims of some marketers as to what personality marketing can do far exceed it. Moreover, public controversies like the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica story […]
Signal could get kicked out of Amazon Web Services
Encrypted messaging service Signal received a curious email from Amazon Web Services. The representative at Amazon is saying that Signal is violating the terms of service by using domain fronting to avoid censorship. Signal isn’t necessarily the most popular messaging app. But chances are you’ve been using Signal technologies in the past. The organization behind […]
Hulu is getting a ‘Stop Suggesting’ button so you can hide its bad recommendations
At Hulu’s Upfronts presentation this morning in New York, the company announced the launch of a new consumer-facing feature that lets you tell Hulu to stop suggesting content you don’t want to watch. The feature was teased previously at CES in January as something that was in the works. The option will appear in the […]
LG adds more AI camera features and a notch for the G7 ThinQ
LG has done a really terrible job keeping the G7 ThinQ under wraps. But clearly the company doesn’t mind. Building up the hype cycle is clearly more important to the handset maker than any kind of big reveal. In addition to leaked images from nearly every angle, the company has already issued several official press […]
Xerox CEO is out ahead of planned Fujifilm deal
The Xerox/Fujifilm deal was never a given for any number of reasons. Now the planned takeover has been thrown into even more doubt, as Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson and six board members are stepping down. The move is considered a huge win for Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, who have been attempting to kill the […]
Sling TV expands cloud DVR service to a bunch of new devices
Dish’s Sling TV service is expanding its Cloud DVR to a wide variety of new devices. Chrome browser, Chromecast, Xbox One, LG Smart TVs, and more recent models of Samsung Smart TVs (2016 and 2017 models) will all now support Sling TV’s Cloud DVR service. For those of you who don’t know, Sling TV DVR […]
Hulu passes 20 million subscribers, will finally offer offline viewing
Hulu now has over 20 million U.S. subscribers – that’s up from the 17 million-plus it claimed in January. The news of its subscriber growth is being delivered alongside a series of pitches to advertisers at the company’s Upfronts presentation in New York this morning, where it’s also touting its upcoming original series and detailing […]
Hulu’s upcoming shows include ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ and Blumhouse horror anthology
Hulu is announcing several new shows this morning at the Digital Content NewFronts, running the gamut from romantic comedy to horror. On the romance front, the streaming service has placed a series order for an update of Four Weddings and a Funeral, which will be written and executive produced by Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton. […]
DigitalOcean launches its container platform
DigitalOcean is getting into the container game. While it’s still best known for its affordable virtual private server hosting, the company’s ambition is to become a major player in the cloud computing space. Hosting was just the first part of that plan, and with its Spaces storage services, for example, it signaled its future plans. […]
Misty is crowfunding its personal robot
Misty Robotics has been talking a good game for 10 months now. Back in June, the Colorado-based Sphero spin-off announced its plans to develop a mainstream home robot. At CES in January, it introduced the world to the Misty I, a skeletal robotic development platform. Four months later, it’s back with Misty II. While it […]
What to Do When You’re Stuck Between Your Boss and Your Boss’s Boss
Cathy Scola/Getty Images It’s smart to have strong relationships with both your boss and your boss’s boss, but when there’s conflict between the two of them, you’re often in a tough spot. What’s the best way to navigate this situation? Should you align yourself with the person who has the most influence over your job […]
Facebook denied a stay to Schrems II privacy referral
Facebook’s attempt to block a series of legal questions relating to a long-running EU privacy case from being referred to Europe’s top court has been throw out by Ireland’s High Court. Earlier this week the company’s lawyers had asked the Irish High Court to stay the referral to the CJEU of a number of key legal […]
BMW, GM, Ford and Renault launch blockchain research group for automotive industry
Car makers BMW, General Motors, Ford and Renault are the big names behind a new group announced today to explore the potential of the blockchain in the automotive and mobility space. MOBI — the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative — launches today with over 30 founding members that also include Bosch, Blockchain at Berkeley, Hyperledger, Fetch.ai, IBM and IOTA. The […]
Google Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring helps developers find problems in Kubernetes apps
In the world of DevOps, developers ship code and operations deals with all the managing, monitoring and troubleshooting, but Google Cloud has found that it sometimes it makes more sense to put some of these responsibilities back in the hands of the developers. Today, the company announced the Beta release of Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring, a […]
Poq closes £9.5M Series B for its ‘apps-as-a-service’ for retailers
Poq, the London-based startup that offers a SaaS to make it easier for retailers to launch and maintain a consumer-facing shopping app, has raised £9.5 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Smedvig Capital, with participation from previous backers Beringea, and Revolt Ventures. It brings the total amount raised by Poq to £16.5 […]
Google open sources gVisor, a sandboxed container runtime
Thanks to KubeCon in Copenhagen, this week is all about containers — and especially Kubernetes. Given that Kubernetes was born out of Google’s internal container usage, it’s no surprise that Google also has a few announcements at the show. Maybe the most interesting of these is the launch of gVisor, a sandboxed container runtime that […]
Nokia to sell its health division to Eric Carreel, the co-founder of Withings after talks with Nest and others
Nokia’s unsuccessful foray into digital health hardware and services looks like it is finally coming to an end. Today the company announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations to sell the division to Eric Carreel, the co-founder and former chairman of Withings, after both Samsung and Google both reportedly also sniffed around. Withings formed the […]
Block Out Time for Solitude and Thinking
The volume of information and stimuli coming at us every day makes it more difficult to focus than ever. To do the careful thinking that decision making and leadership require, you must step back from the noise of the world. Schedule 15-minute breaks at least once or twice a day to sit quietly in your […]
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Description
The re-addition of business descriptions to Google My Business is a welcome change for agencies and businesses alike. Here guest blogger Ben Fisher takes you through the process of writing and submitting the perfect business description. Google has been making big “updates” to Google My Business listings! These improvements are making Google My Business more […]
Thousands of academics spurn Nature’s new paid-access Machine Learning journal
Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has just announce plans to create a Machine Intelligence imprint, and researchers are not happy. The field has been doing fine with open-access journals — why clog it up with the paid-access model everyone has been trying to escape for decades? Over two thousand […]
New Bigscreen update streams your desktop to the Oculus Go
Oculus says that its new Go headset already boasts support for more than 1,000 titles out of the gate as of today. One of the most interesting of the small subset of those that I’ve taken a look at today has been the latest update for Bigscreen, which brings the previously PC-only VR desktop streaming […]
Birchbox ownership changes hands after beauty business does recap
Beauty-in-a-box brand Birchbox has changed up its ownership structure. The New York-based startup, which has raised almost $90 million in funding from noted venture firms like Accel Partners and First Round Capital, has a new majority owner in hedge fund Viking Global, sources confirm to TechCrunch. First reported by Recode, Birchbox made some changes to its cap table […]
10 big announcements from Day 1 of F8
Day 1 of Facebook’s F8 conference was packed with announcements and updates. Here are 10 big takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote on Day 1. You can find full coverage and analysis of F8 here. 1. Facebook announces a dating feature Your next fling could start on Facebook. The company announced a new set of dating […]
A CEO known publicly for the power of smiling was just ousted for intimidating employees
Ron Gutman, the cofounder and CEO of HealthTap, a venture-backed medical advice startup, was reportedly elbowed out today by his board of directors. The reason, the board said in a letter to employees, was that it had finally heard too many complaints about Gutman’s behavior inside the company. Recode published the news of his termination […]
The BBC will run its first podcast ads, powered by Acast
The BBC will start running ads in its podcasts, thanks to a partnership with podcast publishing and monetization company Acast. Acast CEO Ross Adams told me that ads will start running later this week, with the BBC including “bumpers” today announcing the imminent ad launch. “Podcasts are one way we’re reinventing BBC radio to engage […]
Facebook wants to fix the ‘Happy Birthday’ spam problem by using Stories
Have you ever turned off Facebook’s notifications or even deleted the app entirely on your birthday, simply to avoid the non-stop barrage of alerts that someone had posted “Happy Birthday!” to your timeline? A fix may be in the works, as it turns out. An update to how Facebook will handle birthday notifications was given […]
AWS CodePipeline Supports Push Events from GitHub via Webhooks
Push events from GitHub are configured via the AWS CodePipeline console, AWS Command Line Interface, and CodePipeline API. You will need to configure your new or existing pipelines to use webhooks. Pipelines you do not configure with webhooks will continue to use periodic checking. Please see our documentation to learn more about using webhooks with […]
What do Meltdown, Spectre, and RyzenFall Mean for the Future of Cybersecurity?
Andrew Lohn Contributor Andrew Lohn is an engineer at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. The security community is still reeling from the discoveries of the Meltdown and Spectre computer vulnerabilities and now it seems that a rash of new hardware vulnerabilities called MasterKey, RyzenFall, Fallout, and Chimera have been found in the past few months […]
AWS Service Catalog Introduces the Ability to Chain the Launch of Multiple Products
Administrators can chain together products during a launch. To do this, the initiating CloudFormation template will call the Service Catalog ProvisionProduct API as a CloudFormation resource, and reference the next product to launch. For example, administrators can create separate Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS products and then have the completed EC2 product initiate the creation […]
In-app purchases are coming to Facebook’s Instant Games on Android and the web
Facebook is adding support for in-app purchases to its Instant Games platform, the company announced during a session on gaming at its F8 developer conference this afternoon. The feature will allow game developers to add another form of monetization beyond advertising to their games on select platforms, but not on iOS. Instead, support for in-app […]
Cisco is acquiring business intelligence startup Accompany for $270M
Cisco just announced an agreement to acquire Accompany, which uses artificial intelligence to build databases of people and relationships at companies. Founder and CEO Amy Chang has compared the product to a digital chief of staff or personal assistant, giving executives the context they need before conversations and meetings. Cisco plans to incorporate Accompany technology […]
Snapchat scrambles to fix failed redesign, moves Stories to Discover
Snapchat’s redesign was a disaster. It cratered ad views and revenue and led Snapchat’s user count to actually shrink in March. That’s why CEO Evan Spiegel just announced a big reversal of the redesign’s worst part. “We learned that combining watching Stories and communicating with friends into the same place made it harder to optimize […]
Apple is about to return a massive pile of cash to Wall Street after beating Q2 expectations
Apple ended up with a pretty decent report for its second quarter, beating analyst expectations on most of its metrics — but it is making a huge move in terms of returning capital to investors. The company said it is announcing a new $100 billion buyback program and increasing its dividend by 16%. That means […]
Snapchat slips in Q1 to its slowest user growth rate ever
Snapchat stumbled in its Q1 2018 earnings report amidst a rocky redesign and sustained competition from Facebook, unable to keep up its comeback from last quarter. Snapchat reached 191 million daily active users, up from 187 million, with its growth rate sinking to 2.13 percent, it’s lowest ever, compared to 5.05 percent in Q4 and […]
Match stock is tanking in light of Facebook’s dating play
On the heels of Facebook announcing its intent to add a dating element to its platform, dating company Match’s stock is suffering. Match is the brand behind dating services like Tinder, Match, OK Cupid and Plenty of Fish. At the time of publication, Match’s stock was trading down about 22 percent. Facebook’s entrance in this […]
New Oculus Venues app organizes live VR events under one roof
Oculus made good on a lot of their promises from last year at today’s F8 keynote, one of the big ones that we heard a lot more about was Oculus Venues, an app the company has developed to house live sporting events, comedy shows and concerts shot in VR. The unified app will feature content […]
Facebook will soon bring 3D photos to the news feed
Facebook made a small but interesting announcement at the end of its F8 keynote today: you’ll soon be able to post 3d photos to your newsfeed. For now, we know very little about this feature — or even how you’ll capture these photos — but chances are you’ll see them pop up in your friends’ […]
Oculus hopes Boggle will help VR users get social in updated Rooms app
Among all of the other announcements that surfaced today during the F8 keynote, only one of the announcements involved Boggle. Oculus announced a bug update to its social platform, Oculus Rooms which brings a redesigned space with cool new features designed to keep people coming back to the app. This is a big update to […]
Just 48 hours left until Disrupt SF 2018 price hike
We’re rounding the far turn and heading into the home stretch, folks. You have a mere 48 hours left to snag the best pricing available on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018, which takes place September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. Right now, you can save up to $1,800, but once the calendar clicks over […]
Facebook wants weird ‘VR memories’ to take you back to your childhood
While Facebook execs had plenty of updates to share at Tuesday’s F8 keynote, there were far less announcements focused on the weird and experimental things that Facebook is trying to leverage AI and VR to do. That was, until the company made its last announcement for something it’s calling “VR memories,” a weird feature which […]
Smart dresser helps dementia sufferers put their clothes on right
It goes without saying that getting dressed is one of the most critical steps in our daily routine. But long practice has made it second nature, and people suffering from dementia may lose that familiarity, making dressing a difficult and frustrating process. This smart dresser from NYU is meant to help them through the process […]
Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez and Roblox CEO David Baszucki to hit up Disrupt SF
We’ve already got a star-studded lineup prepped to speak at Disrupt SF, running September 5 to September 7. So far, we’ve announced appearances by Sophia Amoruso, Carbon’s Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Adidas’ Eric Liedtke, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Arrington, and Drew Houston. But given that today is the last day to purchase early bird tickets, we […]
Instagram’s ‘Explore’ section is getting a makeover
Instagram is getting a revamped “Explore” section to improve discovery, the company announced this morning during the keynote address at Facebook’s F8 developer conference. The update will better organize its suggestions into topical channels based on your own interests and tastes, so you can more easily find the type of content you’re looking for. Before, […]
Facebook’s AR camera effects platform comes to Instagram
The augmented reality platform on Facebook has largely been hampered by the fact that it’s only on Facebook. Well, today the feature lands on Instagram where it will arrive it front of an audience more-devoted to photo-sharing in a platform more suited to AR filters. The filter platform will operate a little differently on Instagram […]
Facebook’s Safety Check now lets people share first-person accounts from disaster zones
Facebook today announced an update to its Safety Check feature that expands the tool from simply allowing you to mark yourself as safe to sharing a bit more information about what’s happening on the ground. Facebook says it has activated the Safety Check feature, which launched back in 2014, over 1,000 times These new first-person […]
Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise edition, now has 52 SaaS apps and bots, opens up for more integrations
Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that competes against the likes of Slack, Microsoft Teams and Hipchat as a platform for employees to communicate and work on things together, says that it today has tens of thousands of organisations using its platform. Now to pick up more, and to bring more of customers into the […]
Instagram launches video chat
Facebook today announced that Instagram, its popular photo sharing platform, is getting support for video chats, among a couple of other new features. As Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in his F8 keynote today, quite a few Instagram users already use the platform’s live video feature to chat with friends. “People use live […]
Announcing the General Availability of AWS IoT Analytics
AWS IoT Analytics can accept data from any source, including any external sources using an BatchPutMessage API, and is fully integrated with AWS IoT Core. AWS IoT Analytics collects, pre-processes, enriches, stores, and analyzes IoT device data so you can easily identify things like the average distance traveled for a fleet of connected vehicles, or […]
Facebook is launching a new Groups tab and plugin
Facebook is adding a new Groups tab and plugin, announced CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his opening keynote at Facebook’s F8 developer conference this morning. The addition of the new Groups tab on Facebook will make groups a more central part of the Facebook experience, the CEO explained. “In a community, you can meet new people […]
Oculus TV is the VR set-top streaming box you never knew you needed
Alongside the launch of the Oculus Go headset today, Oculus announced that it is working on a new element of its in-headset experience that will appeal to users interested in binging TV inside VR. It’s called Oculus TV and the company hopes that it will evolve to become a quick-and-easy way for VR users to […]
$199 Oculus Go VR headset goes on sale today
Today, at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, the company announced that its cheap and capable Oculus Go virtual reality headset will be going on sale today. The headset costs $199 for the version with 32GB of onboard storage, and $249 for the 64GB variety. We also finally have eyes on the full hardware specs, which only […]