When you’re a company as large as Google, you need to make build versus buy decisions every day, whether that’s buying a company or building the software or renting time on an undersea cable or building your own. Today, the company announced that it’s decided to build another undersea cable. This one will run from […]

Popular password manager 1Password has a new subscription product aimed at business users with larger teams. The new offering, 1Password Business, replaces the Teams Pro plan — with what’s billed as additional features and “flexibility”. (Although existing Teams Pro users can choose to say on it for now, or opt to switch to Teams or […]

Most brand-new venture funds don’t start life with $180 million in capital commitments, especially if they are launched by people who have not worked as venture capitalists before, and particularly not if those people want to focus narrowly on the global interactive entertainment industry. That Makers Fund is the culmination of all of these things […]

Meituan Dianping, the fast-growing Chinese firm valued at $30 billion, is buying Mobike, a Chinese startup that helped pioneer bike-sharing services worldwide, in a major piece of consolidation. The deal was heavy rumored yesterday and TechCrunch has today confirmed with a source that it has been concluded at a price of $2.7 billion. TechCrunch understands […]

JUMP Bikes, the on-demand biking service that integrates with Uber, has been weighing both acquisition and investment offers. A decision has not yet been reached, but right now possible options include a sale to Uber at a price that exceeds $100 million, or a venture investment round, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. One of the possible […]

Streaming royalties are too expensive for Spotify to thrive as a public company just playing us songs. Spotify’s shares closed down 10 percent today during its NYSE trading debut. Luckily it controls much of the relationship between musicians and their fans on its app, poising it to build a powerful revenue and artist loyalty generator […]

Apple has just poached one of Google’s top AI executives in a role likely to have far-reaching consequences. Apple has hired John Giannandrea, previously Google’s Head of AI and Search, the NYTimes reports. Giannandrea will lead Apple’s “machine learning and A.I. strategy,” the company said in a statement to the Times, he will report directly to […]

The Concorde was a generation ago, yet its legend persists — and the dream of supersonic flight may be returning. NASA and Lockheed Martin are taking concrete steps towards the creation of jets that travel faster than the speed of sound but are “about as loud as a car door closing.” NASA announced today that […]

GoFundMe, the startup focuses crowdfunding for charitable causes, has made another acquisition to scale up its platform: it has acquired YouCaring, a smaller rival, creating a combined community of 50 million donors in some 19 countries in the process. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but it comes amid a flurry of […]

Alexa’s routines are getting a musical upgrade. First launched last year, routines allow Alexa device owners to string together a series of actions that kick off with a simple command – like “good morning” or “I’m home,” for example. Until today, the feature included support for news, weather, traffic, smart home skills, as well as, […]

Any company that’s looking to replace the over 5 billion pounds of ground beef making its way onto tables in the U.S. every year with a meatless substitute is going to need a lot of cash. It’s a big vision with lots of implications for the world — from climate change and human health to […]

Reports of an active shooter at YouTube’s San Bruno, CA headquarters have been reported on social media. Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers. — Vadim Lavrusik (@Lavrusik) April 3, 2018 We will update this story as we learn more. 

Spotify is done with its long-awaited “direct listing” experiment. The music streaming company went public without the IPO. After completing its first trade halfway through the day at $165.90, Spotify fell to $149.60. It was a down day on the stock market, but at a $26.6 billion market cap, it’s up from the private market trading […]

Jameson Toole Contributor Jameson Toole is co-founder and CEO of Fritz, which helps developers optimize, deploy and manage machine learning models on mobile devices. If you’re running a software company today, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that most or all of your apps will run in the cloud. Likely Amazon or Google’s. It’s hard to […]

MIT is disassociating itself from Nectome, the Y Combinator-backed startup promising to preserve customers’ brains for the possibility of future digital upload. Co-founder Robert McIntyre described the procedure as “100 percent fatal” — it involves connecting terminally ill patients to a machine that pumps embalming fluids into their arteries. The company has collected (refundable) $10,000 […]

After a racial slur GIF caused Snapchat to remove its GIPHY sticker feature, Snapchat confirms to TechCrunch it’s reinstated its integration. GIPHY has apologized, fixed the bug that let the objectionable GIF slip through, and reviewed its GIF sticker library four times in an effort to guarantee that offensive content won’t end up in apps […]

I was pleasantly surprised by Motiv. Sure, my expectations were low for a fitness tracking ring, but pleasantly surprised is pleasantly surprised is still pleasantly surprised. The $200 Fitbit alternative gets a couple of key software upgrades this week, including, most notably, the addition of Android compatibility, along with some Alexa integration. Initially launched as […]

If the overstuffed buffets of Far Cry 5 and other expansive AAA games leave a sour taste in your mouth, you may find Minit a suitable palate cleanser. This charming little top-down adventure combines some clever puzzle solving with a well-realized black and white art style. The pitch is simple: you’re a little guy who […]

AllRaise, a new non-profit organization that’s behind diversity and inclusion efforts like Female Founder Office Hours (FFOH) and Founders for Change (FfC), wants to increase the amount of funding female founders receive, Forbes first reported earlier today. Currently, female founders receive just 15 percent of all venture funding, according to AllRaise. Within the next five years, AllRaise […]

More than ten years ago, betaworks launched to foster an ecosystem of startups focused on the intersection of media and consumer behavior. While the mission hasn’t changed, the structure has seen some tweaks. The company has introduced its own venture arm, led by Matt Hartman, as well as the more recent launch of betaworks Studios. […]

Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, users have flocked to their Facebook privacy settings to sever their connection to third-party apps that no longer wanted to have access to their data. But deleting them all took forever because you had to remove them one by one. Now Facebook has released a new way to select as […]

Over the last several years, Zendesk has been making the transition from a company that caters mostly to small businesses to one with larger enterprise customers — and their revenue reflects that. The company announced it has crossed the $.5 billion annual run rate since its last earning report in February. It also announced a […]

Spotify opened on the New York Stock Exchange at $165.90, giving the company a market value of nearly $30 billion. The first trade didn’t happen until 12:45pm Eastern. This is halfway through the trading day, and a record for the latest time for a public debut. Spotify isn’t selling its shares on the stock market, meaning […]

Times are certainly tight at HTC, but their plays in the consumer VR market are starting to look like Hail Marys. The company’s central VR platform play, their Viveport subscription product is regarded by a lot of people I’ve talked to as little more than bloatware, while their newest product, the Vive Pro, is an […]

Right in time for NAB, Adobe today announced the latest updates to its Premiere CC and After Effects CC video editing and motion graphics tools. The general theme of this release is the introduction of two new AI-powered tools that will make the life of editors easier, as well as a variety of small updates […]

When Stackery’s founders were still at New Relic in 2014, they recognized there was an opportunity to provide instrumentation for the emerging serverless tech market. They left the company after New Relic’s IPO and founded Stackery with the goal of providing a governance and management layer for serverless architecture. The company had a couple of big […]

With the number for cryptocurrencies passing 1,000, and the craze continuing, things are getting pretty wild out there to say the least. And these cryopto asssets can vary from the tokens issued by some no-name startup all the way up to Ether and the venerable Bitcoin. The trouble is, converting those coins into other currencies […]

TechCrunch is partnering with UC Berkeley on May 11 to produce TC Sessions: Robotics, a one-day show focused on emerging robotic technologies and the startup scene. The editorial team had a blast planning this agenda as, between the Bay Area’s universities and startup ecosystem, there are far more robotics-driven technology projects and startups on the […]

Backblaze made its name as a cloud-based storage backup provider (and using lots of hard drives in the process) for individuals and businesses. With B2, however, the company also launched a file-centric cloud storage service for developers in 2015 that aims to challenge similar offerings from AWS and Azure on price. Since Backblaze doesn’t offer […]

Perhaps aiming to snag some attention away from Snapchat’s big group video call update out this morning, Facebook also announced an update to its chat app Messenger, which will now allow users to share 360-degree videos and HD quality video (720p). In both cases, you’ll have to capture the photo or video outside the Messenger […]

Major League Baseball games are coming to Twitter as a result of a renewed partnership. This Thursday, Twitter will live stream the Texas Rangers versus the Oakland Athletics at 3:35 PM ET. The game will be the first of the weekly day-game live streams of out-of-market MLB games in the weeks ahead, during the 2018 […]

Mozilla wants its newest internet conquest to be mixed reality. The company has just showed off its first look at “Firefox Reality,” a browser built specifically for headsets. Mozilla has been behind some super important work here already with things like A-Frame and the WebVR/WebAR standards, so this isn’t a big surprise at all. The […]

Snapchat has today introduced a new group video chat feature, letting users chat with up to 16 of their closest friends. If users need more people in the chat (which, for those of us who have large conference calls, sounds awful!), Snap is also offering group voice calls with up to 32 participants. The feature […]

SalesLoft, an Atlanta-based startup that helps companies manage the contact phase of the sales process, announced a $50 million Series C today. Insight Venture Partners was lead investor with participation from LinkedIn and Emergence Capital, which also participated in the company’s A and B rounds. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $75 million, so […]

Adobe is launching an update to its Lightroom photo management and editing apps today. We’re not talking about any revolutionary new features but there are a few updates here that’ll make life for photographers a bit easier. Since the end of last year, there isn’t just one canonical “Lightroom” anymore, of course. With Lightroom CC […]

SoftBank is at it again giving money companies that rival startups it has already invested in. The Japanese firm and its long-time ally (and existing Paytm backer) Alibaba have come together to invest $450 million more into Paytm’s e-commerce business, Paytm Mall, as first reported by Mint. The deal is said to value the business at $1.6-$2 […]

Unconscious and implicit biases can show up every step of the hiring the process. That’s why Greenhouse, a recruiting and applicant tracking program, has partnered with diversity and inclusion consulting firm Paradigm to bake in inclusive hiring practices throughout the entire process. Greenhouse Inclusion is designed to help companies employ inclusive hiring practices throughout a […]

InVision, the NY-based design platform focused on collaboration, has today announced the acquisition of Wake. Wake is a design tool focused squarely on supporting design visibility throughout a particular organization. Wake allows companies to share design assets and view work in progress as designers build out their screens, logos, or other designs. Design team leaders, […]

Singapore’s competition agency last week opened an investigation into Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asia, and now authorities in the Philippines and Malaysia are following suit by looking closely at the deal. From The Philippines Competition Commission: The Grab-Uber acquisition is likely to have a far reaching impact on the riding public and the transportation […]

Singapore has fined two Airbnb hosts who broke the country’s rules on apartment rentals. In a first for the country, two men were fined SG$60,000 (US$45,800) each for unauthorized lettings at four apartments using the U.S.-based rental platform, Reuters reports. Singapore’s law prevents public housing rentals that are under six months — or three months in […]

JPMorgan’s key blockchain executive is departing the bank for the world of startups, it has emerged. Amber Baldet heads up JPMorgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence, which explores the development of distributed ledger technology and uses cases of blockchain technology across the firm’s business. A high-profile figure in the blockchain space in her own right, she is leaving to […]

Facebook has been caught archiving videos users thought they had deleted. The New York Magazine flagged the problem to the company last week, after a user downloaded their Facebook archive and was surprised to discover multiple takes of a video they had thought had been discarded at the time the recording was made, years earlier. Facebook has […]

Digital music giant Spotify is joining the stock market on Tuesday, making it the biggest consumer tech company to go public since Snap debuted early last year. But unlike Snap, Spotify isn’t doing an IPO. The “o” part of IPO stands for offering and Spotify isn’t raising any money. Instead, existing Spotify shareholders will be […]

Insider, a service that aims to help brands go about their internet marketing with greater efficiency and success, has landed an $11 million investment led by Sequoia India. The startup is originally from Turkey where it began life in 2012 as a platform that helped optimize online marketing campaigns. Now at 240 staff across 16 […]

Walmart is in discussions to acquire medication delivery service PillPack for “under $1 billion,” reports CNBC. CNBC’s sources said the deal isn’t final yet, but talks have been going on for months and Amazon was also a potential suitor for the startup, which delivers medications to tens of thousands of customers in the United States. […]

You can probably argue over whether it’s a good or a bad sign, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter today a report in The Information that he has taken over direct control of the division that’s producing Tesla’s Model 3 electric sedan after the company failed to meet the delivery goals it had […]

The idea of a robot methodically hunting you down isn’t the most pleasant of concepts. A metal-bodied being zooming after you at up to 25 miles per hour with multiple eyes fixed on your location seems… out of your best interest. The Skydio R1 drone seems friendly enough though. I wouldn’t call it loving or […]

Millennials may be a bit obsessed with self-care – and it’s beginning to pay off for the makers of self-care and digital wellness apps. According to data from multiple app store intelligence firms, the category is now seeing notable growth. In the first quarter of 2018, the top 10 grossing self-care apps in the U.S. […]

It looks like Google is making some changes to its AI team, starting at the top. As The Information first reported, Google’s AI chief John Giannandrea is leaving his post. Last year, Giannandrea expanded his role as the company’s AI chief, after joining Google in 2010, to include search, too. We reached out to Google […]

Self-driving car programs have been under close scrutiny as of late. That is due in part to a fatal accident involving one of Uber’s self-driving cars in Tempe, Arizona, as well as a fatal crash involving one of Tesla’s Model X vehicles, which had its semi-autonomous Autopilot system engaged. Today, the California Department of Motor […]

I recently received a review unit of the Embrace Smart Mirror. It’s essentially a 24-inch Android tablet mounted behind a roughly 40-inch mirror. It works well when 3rd party software is installed. Here’s what I learned. It’s impossible to get a good photo of the smart mirror I tried a tripod, selfie stick, and every […]

Lyft seems to be gearing up to launch its carpooling service, Line, in its first international city. This comes after Lyft launched its standard, Plus, Premiere, Lux and SUV services in Toronto back in December. “With the response we’ve had since coming to Toronto, the growing network of riders and drivers makes it easier than […]

Fitbit shaved off another roughly 10% of its value in trading today after a downgrade from a Wall Street firm, which will once again throw on more skepticism as to whether or not Fitbit can be a viable business in the smartwatch market. The note came from Morgan Stanley this morning, which said it was […]

SpaceX is set to launch its 14th resupply mission to the International Space Station, sending up a lightly used Dragon capsule filled with goodies at 1:30 PST. In addition to the delivery, this Dragon will also take back some cargo: the malfunctioning Robonaut 2, which apparently bricked itself sometime during the last few months. This […]

Apple is planning to use its own chips for its Mac devices, which could replace the Intel chips currently running on its desktop and laptop hardware, according to a report from Bloomberg. Apple already designs a lot of custom silicon, including its chipsets like the W-series for its Bluetooth headphones, the S-series in its watches, […]

Google today announced that it will ban from its Chrome Web Store any and all browser extensions that mine crypto. Mining cryptocurrencies in the browser isn’t the most efficient way for individuals to get rich, but if you are a developer and you get thousands of machines to mine for you, that equation changes in your […]

Microsoft today launched two new courses in its online education program for developers: an entry-level software development class and an AI course for more advanced developers who want to expand their knowledge of machine learning. It’s no secret that there aren’t enough data scientists and machine learning developers available to fulfill the current demand. It’s […]

In an unusual move, Pluralsight has announced that it filed confidentially for IPO. Companies typically stay quiet until they make the filings public, unless reporters break the news first. But it’s no surprise to those who have been following Utah’s tech scene that Pluralsight is planning to list on the stock market this year. The […]

Tesla provided some more details on Friday about the fatal crash involving one of its Model X vehicles, but the National Transportation Safety Board isn’t particularly happy about that, The Washington Post first reported. “In each of our investigations involving a Tesla vehicle, Tesla has been extremely cooperative on assisting with the vehicle data,” NTSB spokesperson […]

Facebook is continuing to drive updates to their little-used virtual reality Spaces app where users can explore 360 content and chat with other users in VR. Today, FB showcased some big new changes to the avatar system in Spaces that switches up the visual style quite a bit. The avatar system is a lot more […]

ESPN’s new streaming service, ESPN+, was already expected to arrive this spring. Now we have the launch date: April 12, 2018. The service will cost subscribers $4.99 per month, and offer streaming access to live sports, original content, and on-demand programming delivered a redesigned and personalized ESPN app, as well as ESPN.com In August 2017, […]

Microsoft continues its steady pace of opening up new data centers and launching new regions for its Azure cloud. Today, the company announced the launch of two new regions in Australia. To deliver these new regions, Azure Australia Central and Central 2, Microsoft entered a strategic partnership with Canberra Data Centers and unsurprisingly, the regions […]

Elliott Management, an investment firm long known for its activist streak, set it sights on Commvault today, purchasing a 10.3 percent stake and nominating four Elliott-friendly members to the company’s board of directors. It likely means that Elliott is ready to push the company to change direction and cut costs, if it sticks to its […]

Genius, the big database of song lyrics and musical knowledge, is today launching its own version of “stories,” the Snapchat and Instagram-like short form sharing format that’s been rapidly spreading to a number of sites and apps, including Facebook, Messenger, Skype, and even Google. Genius’ “Song Stories,” as the new product is called, combine Genius […]

While taking some time off to travel before his next gig, Sisun Lee spent a lot of time in Korea — where he found himself drinking alcohol pretty much every night and then getting rolling the next morning, regardless of hangover status. He also found that there were popular local herbal hangover drinks that everyone […]

Tesla’s stock price is falling and in doing so, has retreated on milestones it set last year. As of publication, the company’s value is less than Ford’s for the first time in a year. At current levels, Tesla’s market cap is $42.063 billion while Ford is trading at $43.588. It was a year ago tomorrow that […]

Walmart is bringing its partnership with JD.com into its grocery business. The Chinese physical store will stock products that customers can also buy through its Walmart’s virtual storefront on the Chinese electronic marketplace, JD.com, according to a report in Reuters. Walmart first partnered with JD.com two years ago as both companies struggled to overcome the […]

The Model 3 now has a new way to control Autopilot. The company recently sent out an update that moved the controls from the center infotainment stack to the steering wheeling. Previously, drivers had to use the large screen to change Autopilot’s speed and cruise distance and in doing so, required drivers to take their […]

YouTube today is introducing a new ad format that will allow viewers to skip even shorter ads. Called “TrueView for reach,” the format arrives around two years after YouTube’s introduction of the six-second bumper, which the company says advertisers have learned how to best use to raise brand awareness, despite having only a few seconds […]

Just in time to be too late for your 2017 taxes, Amazon’s added a new skill for Alexa that lets users donate with their voice. The command is pretty much as you’d expect — say, “Alexa, donate $20 to the American Cancer Society” and the smart assistant will pull that money from your associated account. […]

Po.et a startup that wants to put publishing permissions on the blockchain and build a marketplace on top of it, announced today that it was bringing on Eric Elliott as the VP of engineering. Today’s announcement comes on the heels that the company had hired Jarrod Dicker as CEO in February. Dicker was previously vice president of innovation […]

With the race to next-generation silicon in full swing, the waterfall of venture money flowing into custom silicon startups is already showing an enormous amount of potential for some more flexible hardware for an increasingly changing technology landscape — and Naveed Sherwani hopes to tap that for everyone else. That’s the premise of SiFive, a […]

A couple of years ago, Dropbox shocked a lot of people when it decided to mostly drop the public cloud, and built its own datacenters. More recently, Atlassian did the opposite, closing most of its datacenters and moving to the cloud. Companies make these choices for a variety of reasons. When Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath […]

After it took James Tsuei a month of research and emails to plan a dive in Indonesia, he decided it was time for his startup, Deepblu, to launch a booking platform for divers. Planet Deepblu bills itself as “the Airbnb for diving” and is the latest piece of the diving ecosystem the Taipei-based startup is […]

As expected since February, Alibaba will buy all outstanding shares of Ele.me that it doesn’t already own. Best-known for food deliveries, Ele.me claims to be China’s biggest online delivery and local services platform. In an announcement, Alibaba said the deal values Ele.me at $9.5 billion. Alibaba, which first invested in Ele.me two years ago, and […]

Cloudflare decided to use April Fool’s Day (4/1) to share some news about four 1’s that could help speed your internet browsing. The company announced today that it’s launching a DNS service for consumers called 1.1.1.1 The company’s tool — which is not some super nerdy April Fool’s joke — will allow users to shorten […]

Steven Aquino Contributor Steven Aquino is a freelance tech writer and iOS accessibility expert. More posts by this contributor The pleasure and the pain of the accessible smart home How auto unlock makes the Mac more accessible From an accessibility news standpoint, this week’s Apple event in Chicago was antithetical to the October 2016 event. At […]

What goes up must come down. That’s generally the rule, anyway, certainly for spacecraft that have fulfilled their purpose and have no way to stay in orbit. Such is the case of Tiangong-1, China’s first space station, which after nearly 7 years in space is making an uncontrolled descent and should provide a nice fiery […]

Providing ongoing mentorship can be impractical for busy professionals. With STEAMRole, the idea is to empower professionals to easily share their stories with students and young professionals. It’s like Tinder for finding your role model and dream career in science, technology, engineering, art or math, STEAMRole founder and CEO Clarence Wooten told me. “As the […]

The Defense Department’s research wing is serious about putting drones into action, not just one by one but in coordinated swarms. The Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program is kicking off its second “sprint,” a period of solicitation and rapid prototyping of systems based around a central theme. This spring sprint is all about “autonomy.” The idea […]

There’s money, and then there’s wealth. In all likelihood, money is what most of us have (or don’t have). It’s what we use to buy lunch, pay rent or put a down payment on a house. Wealth, on the other hand, is what buys yachts. But more than superficial material things, wealth also buys financial security […]

First things first: I had a really good time watching Ready Player One. As promised, the movie feels like a chance for Steven Spielberg to return to his roots as a blockbuster filmmaker, and to take all the toys out of the box and smash them together. The film is based on Ernest Cline’s bestselling […]

The team behind the popular open-source CMS Drupal is urging admins to update their sites to ward off a nasty bug that could leave their sites “highly compromised” to attackers, according to the organization. The effected versions (Drupal 6, 7 and 8) of the CMS power over one million websites on the internet. Drupal has […]

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Esteban Kolsky, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Saturday, March 31, 2018. @stevegillmor, @ekolsky, @DenisPombriant, @fradice, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor Liner Notes Live chat stream The Gillmor Gang on Facebook

Terrace House is a tough show to explain. Like The Real World and other reality TV, the show puts a group of strangers together in a house. But that’s about where the similarities end. On Terrace House, most of the cast members genuinely seem to be rooting for each other. And while there’s still drama, […]

At a time when the models of traditional social networks are being questioned, it’s more important than ever to experiment with alternatives. Arbtr is a proposed social network that limits users to sharing a single thing at any given time, encouraging “ruthless self-editing” and avoiding “nasty things” like endless feeds filled with trivial garbage. It’s […]

At last, a use for that industrial knitting machine you bought at a yard sale! Carnegie Mellon researchers have created a method that generates knitting patterns for arbitrary 3D shapes, opening the possibility of “on-demand knitting.” Think 3D printing, but softer. The idea is actually quite compelling for those of us who are picky about […]

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor What does it take to be a startup that raises huge sums quickly? Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items When Facebook loses, who wins? That’s a question for startups that may be worth contemplating following Facebook’s recent stock price haircut. The […]

The Red Hat Linux distribution is turning 25 years old this week. What started as one of the earliest Linux distributions is now the most successful open-source company, and its success was a catalyst for others to follow its model. Today’s open-source world is very different from those heady days in the mid-1990s when Linux […]

The CEO and COO are at their desks when I knock on the door, intently assembling robots to fulfill the company’s latest order. Tapster is about as lean as startups get. Founded three years ago (on Star Wars Day), the company’s two-person staff is half the size it was at its height, but a third […]

Tesla has provided another update to last week’s fatal crash. As it turns out, Tesla said the driver had Autopilot on with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. However, it seems the driver ignored the vehicle’s warnings to take back control. “The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier […]

Uber is closing the doors on its on-demand package delivery service, RUSH, in New York City, San Francisco and Chicago, TechCrunch has learned. In an email to users, Uber said it plans to close RUSH operations June 30, 2018. “At Uber, we believe in making big bold bets, and while ending UberRUSH comes with some […]

Back in July of last year, Niantic organized an outdoor festival all focusing on its augmented reality game, Pokémon GO. In theory, players would come from all around for a day of wandering Chicago’s Grant Park, meeting other players, and catching new/rare Pokémon. It… did not go as planned. Widespread cellular connectivity and logistical issues […]

Dozens of high-tech phone smugglers have been apprehended by Chinese police, who caught onto their scheme to send refurbished iPhones into the country from Hong Kong via drone — but not the way you might think. China’s Legal Daily reported the news (and Reuters noted shortly after) following a police press conference; it’s apparently the […]

Slowly but surely, Alexa’s becoming a more competent catchall video assistant. Back in January, Amazon launched its Video Skill API designed to offer more control over apps from cable and satellite companies. An update this week brings the ever-important ability to use the smart assistant to start recoding. The skill joins a number of functions […]

A company called Clipisode is today launching a new service that’s essentially a “talk show in a box,” as founder Brian Alvey describes it. Similar to how Anchor now allows anyone to build a professional podcast using simple mobile and web tools, Clipisode does this for video content. With Clipisode, you can record a video […]

Whenever you are doing something online that requires you to present an official ID like a passport or driver’s license to complete the transaction, it presents risk to both parties. Consumers want to know they are secure and brands want to know the person is using valid credentials. That’s where Veriff comes in. Kaarel Kotkas, […]

When you’ve got leverage, don’t be afraid to use it. That’s been Google’s modus operandi in the news and publishing world over the last year or so as it has pushed its AMP platform, funding various news-related ventures that may put it ahead, and nourished its personalized Chrome tabs on mobile. The latter, as Nieman […]

I travel with a Canon DSLR and two primes, a 35mm f1.4 and an 85mm f1.2 (endearingly nicknamed, “the fat kid”). Switching lenses is cumbersome and not ideal in certain environments, like a Saigon street market, densely crowded with vendors, tourists and thieves. After lugging this camera kit through six countries last year, I upgraded […]

ClearVoice recently launched a new feature to give freelancers a better way to show off their work and get new jobs. CV Portfolios offer an easier alternative to personal websites that are often sparsely populated, out-of-date or otherwise neglected. Thanks a technology that the company is calling VoiceGraph, writers no longer have to keep the […]

Twitch, the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform for gaming, laid off “several” people yesterday, Polygon first reported. It’s not clear how many people were let go, but according to Polygon, probably no more than 30 people were let go. Twitch has since confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch. “Coming off the record-setting numbers shared in our 2017 Retrospective, […]

A funny thing happened the last couple of times I was briefed on a Huawei flagship product: news was breaking about some major roadblock for the company’s U.S. distribution plans. First it was AT&T backing out in the midst of CES and then it was Best Buy’s decision to drop the company just ahead of […]

Global ride-hailing rivals Taxify and Uber have launched motorcycle passenger service in East Africa. Customers of both companies in Uganda and Taxify riders in Kenya can now order up two-wheel transit by app. uberBoda, as its branded, is Uber’s first motorcycle service offering in Africa, and second globally after Asia. For Taxify, it’s the first two-wheel launch […]

Recently, I took my car to the dealership to get my window fixed. As part of this transaction, I gave my email address to be contacted with a price quote and get updates about where my car is in the maintenance process. Okay, cool, I’m completely fine with that. What I was later not so […]

Google wants to put its data science chops to the test – in real-time. This weekend, the company is going use data analytics techniques and machine learning during the Final Four in San Antonio to figure out what it thinks will happen next in the live games. And after doing so, it will hand off […]

Uber’s exit from Southeast Asia is under scrutiny from regulators in Singapore who believe that Grab’s purchase of the U.S. firm’s business in the region may violates competition laws. Singapore-based Grab, Uber’s chief rival in the region, announced the acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asian business on Monday. In return, Uber is taking 27.5 percent of the Grab […]

SpaceX has successfully launched its Iridium-5 mission, which carries 10 satellites to add to Iridium’s NEXT global communications constellation. This is the fifth set of 10, out of a total of 75 that SpaceX is launching for client Iridium, and today’s launch used a first stage Falcon 9 booster originally employed last October for the […]

Nobody wants to deal with ICOs. MailChimp, the popular mass mailing platform, has officially banned users who want to send emails about ICOs/token sales in its terms of use. They write in their legal policies page: Also, we cannot allow businesses involved in any aspect of the sale, transaction, exchange, storage, marketing or production of […]

SteelSeries has two new Arctis Pro gaming headsets out, and they pack a lot of tech and versatility into a comfortable, visually attractive package. The SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless and Arctis Pro + GameDAC are both incredibly capable headsets that deliver terrific sound, and depending on your system needs, should probably be your first choice […]

No matter what cloud you build on, if you want to build something that’s highly available, you’re always going to opt to put your applications and data in at least two physically separated regions. Otherwise, if a region goes down, your app goes down, too. All of the big clouds also offer a concept called […]

Walmart is in early stage talks to acquire health insurer Humana, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Terms of the deal are unknown, but Humana is valued at $37 billion and reported net income of $2.4 billion on $53.8 billion in revenues during 2017. The deal would allow the retailer to strengthen […]

When workflow management platform Asana announced a $75 million round of funding in January led by former Vice President Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, the startup didn’t give much of an indication of what it planned to do with the money, or what it was that won over investors to a new $900 million valuation […]

At the Adobe Summit this week in Las Vegas, the company introduced what could be the ultimate customer experience construct, a customer experience system of record that pulls in information, not just from Adobe tools, but wherever it lives. In many ways it marked a new period in the notion of customer experience management, putting […]

The latest update to macOS provides support for external graphics card. Apple announced this would hit the OS last June at WWDC and now it’s finally here. The update allows Mac users to increase the graphical processing power through an external graphics card connected through Thunderbolt 3. Perviously users had to buy an eGPU dev […]

[embedded content] SpaceX is launching its next mission for client Iridium this morning, with an instantaneous launch window for the mission opening at 7:13 AM PDT (10:13 AM EDT). The Iridium-5 mission will take off from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and there’s a backup window set for March 31 at 7:08 […]

The streaming video service iQiyi, a business owned by China’s online search giant Baidu, dropped 13.6% in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq — closing at $15.55, or down $2.45 from its opening price of $18. The company still managed to pull off one of the largest public offerings by a Chinese tech […]

Roam, a San Francisco-based robotics startup, has just debuted a lower body robotic exoskeleton aimed firmly at skiers. The company’s first product doesn’t stray too far from nearby Ekso Bionics, where CEO and founder Tim Swift worked perviously. Though the simply titled Robotic Ski Exoskeleton trades warehouse work and mobility assistance for the admittedly more […]

If you own a Model S built before April 2016, you’re probably going to want to swing by a dealer and get it checked out.. Tesla has just issued a voluntary recall for 123,000 Model S vehicles, having found that the power steering bolts in some were displaying “excessive corrosion”. Model X and Model 3 […]