Details are light at the moment, but a bit of news out of Google’s Playtime developer event this morning: the company is launching a Google Play bug bounty program that’ll encourage researchers to poke around and look for vulnerabilities in some of Android’s most popular third-party apps. Read More
Romeo Power has just released what looks to be the mobile charging device of my dreams. Its wand-shaped “Saber,” using the company’s proprietary power management technology, is a compact little charger that seems ideal for keeping my three-year-old, busted-up MacBook running when I’m on the go. Read More
Adobe is hosting its Max conference this week — and as usual, it’s using the event to show off some of its latest experiments. Indeed, Adobe even has a special keynote just to show off its craziest demos, but the company apparently has so much to show, that it decided to demo one prototype early: Project SonicScape. The idea here is simple: how can VR/AR editors best edit their… Read More
While Yammer (launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, BTW) might have pioneered what was, at the time, dubbed “Twitter for work”, it wasn’t until Slack came along that people started to realise just how powerful this method of communication could be. From open source integration to new kinds of collaborative tools built by developers on its platform, Slack has become the gateway drug… Read More
Banks face an increasingly crowded battlefield in the fight for millennial customers. Not only do they have to compete with services like Venmo, but many messaging apps are adding their own peer-to-peer payment services. Tel Aviv-based startup PayKey thinks it has the solution with a smartphone keyboard that lets bank customers access financial services without having to log onto a banking app. Read More
A report by an EU consumer watchdog has flagged up myriad problems with smartwatches designed for children, including security flaws, privacy concerns, and risks posed by unreliable features. Read More
Thanks to an analysis of EEO-1 data by Reveal News, we have a clear picture of just how many women of color (Native American, black, Latina, Pacific Islander or two or more races) work at major tech companies. When tech companies release their diversity reports, they rarely, if ever, report intersectional data such as the percentage of women of color they employ. In early 2016, Slack became… Read More
MongoDB made its public debut with a bang, with jumping more than 25%, today after spending the past several days revising up its expectations throughout the IPO process — which seems to have landed on the right spot. The company provides open-source technology that can be attractive for early-stage startups that want to get off the ground and then seeks to convert those companies to… Read More
VidAngel, a streaming service that altered copyrighted works to edit out adult language, nudity and violence, has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced on Wednesday. The Utah-based service had been sued by major studios, including Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Disney, and others, who said VidAngel was operating as an unlicensed streaming service, and was offering films to… Read More
Netflix’s The Punisher finally has a solid release date: November 17. That’s not too far away, but in case you’re still impatient, check out this trailer for it, a brand new one released today that goes into the backstory of Frank Castle (aka The Punisher) in more detail than we’ve seen before, in either previous trailers or in his first appearance in season two of… Read More
Ride-hailing company Lyft has raised a new $1 billion funding round, putting its post-money valuation at $11 billion total. The round was led by Alphabet’s CapitalG, its growth-focused investment fund, and CapitalG partner David Lawee will join Lyft’s board as part of the transaction. Lyft shared the news in an official blog post, and noted that it has run over 500 million rides… Read More
Flickr, the once Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site that’s now a part of Verizon*, is getting out of the photo book printing business, and is shutting down the feature that allowed users to turn photos into professional-quality wall art. In an email sent to users this week, Flickr said that it was turning over photo books to publishing service Blurb as of October 16, 2017, but the wall… Read More
In what could amount to a sea change in the way we transmit data over fiber optics, researchers at University College London have found a new way speed things up by changing the color of the transmitted light. “To maximise the capacity of optical fibre links, data is transmitted using different wavelengths, or colours, of light. Ideally, we’d dedicate a wavelength to each subscriber… Read More
Boeing’s HorizonX venture arm has invested in Near Earth Autonomy, a Carnegie Mellon spin-out company that focuses on building autonomous aircraft systems for things including site inspection, defence and potentially automated cargo delivery and personal transportation systems – i.e., flying taxis. Near Earth Autonomy is led by CEO and co-founder Sanjiv Singh, along with his… Read More
Snaps has raised $6 million in Series A funding for what it calls its Conversational Marketing Cloud.
By that, it’s referring to a suite of tools that allows businesses to promote themselves through messaging. CEO Christian Brucculeri said Snaps is differentiated by its “write once and deploy everywhere approach,” allowing marketers to build things like chatbots and emoji… Read More
Plenty of investors have broken their picks, trying to find gold in education technology. That doesn’t seem to concern the limited partners of Owl Ventures, a three-year-old venture firm that’s focused only on edtech, and which just closed on $185 million — nearly twice the $100 million it raised for its debut fund in 2014.
What’s the appeal? As the firm tells it… Read More
Just a few days ago we wrote that new Pokémon were seemingly just about to land in Pokémon Go timed alongside a Halloween event — and hey, what do you know: Niantic has just confirmed it. The first Generation 3 Pokémon should start showing up as early as tomorrow, October 20th, at noon Pacific. As we figured initially, though, we’re not going to see the entire Gen 3 collection… Read More
A lot of the conversation today about on-demand transportation is focused on how new players like Uber and Lyft are rapidly expanding and disrupting the established transportation market (alongside whether they have been overvalued and overplayed in their rapid ascent), but today comes news about how one of those newer players is teaming up with a legacy transportation business as a route… Read More
Verizon’s* plans to launch a streaming service of its own to compete with the likes of Dish’s Sling TV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Sony’s PlayStation Vue, and others, have been pushed back to spring 2018, according to a report from Bloomberg on Wednesday. Citing unnamed sources, the report indicates the timing of the launch is still tentative and could be postponed… Read More
Over the past 18 months, investments in blockchain startups tackling a variety of problems have climbed. SparkChain Capital, a new $100 million early-stage fund launched by SparkLabs Group, wants to contribute by backing blockchain and cryptocurrency-related companies that are solving real-world issues. Read More
