TechCrunch

 While traditional industries can get away with ignoring broader social ills or hot-button political issues, tech companies are expected to solve the former and speak out on the latter — a position that’s either totally fair or a too-high standard depending on who you ask. If you asked most of the people onstage at Disrupt last week, that expectation is just another thing that… Read More

 Instagram’s still growing at a rapid pace, having added 100 million new monthly active users in just a month since it last reported a new figure. It now has 800 million users engaging with the service on at least a monthly basis, the company revealed on Monday at an event in NYC, and it has 500 million using the service on a daily basis, too. Instagram announced the 700 million… Read More

 CBS’s big bet on “Star Trek: Discovery,” the first Star Trek TV series since “Star Trek: Enterprise” wrapped in 2005, is also serving the network’s big bet on its over-the-top streaming service. While it’s too soon to know if the show will hold up over time, the early numbers are promising, the network says today. According to CBS, the show’s… Read More

 Outlier’s founder Abe Burmeister is a designer who joined the world of clothing manufacturing over five years ago. His clothing – created with cutting edge fabrics – is touted as high-tech and very chic, but what frustrates Burmeister is how slowly the clothing industry is moving. His latest creation, a rolltop knapsack, uses a unique material to create one of the lightest… Read More

 Over a year after Google showed off its “connected” jean jacket designed for bike commuters at last year’s Google I/O developer conference, the company today is unveiling the final product, which goes on sale on Wednesday for $350. Designed in partnership with Levi’s, the new smart jacket takes advantage of technology from Google’s Advanced Technology and… Read More

 Those who’ve been eagerly awaiting Fitbit’s first real foray into the world of smartwatches will be able to get their hands on the thing in a matter of days. The company announced this morning that the Ionic will hit retailers October 1, along with the Flyer Bluetooth headphones. Fitbit CEO James Park talked the device up at every opportunity possible ahead of its release &#8212… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Sunday, September 24, 2017. Binge ignoring, EquiChain, NFL kneeling, UberEats. G3: London Calling – Recorded live Friday, 9.22.17 Denise Howell, Elisa Camahort Page, Mary Hodder, Kristie Wells, and Tina Chase Gillmor.. Apple Watch 3, London fires Uber, Jimmy Kimmel,… Read More

 Moving lots of data to the cloud can take a long time and cost quite a bit, even over fast connections. Like its competitors — and especially AWS — Microsoft has long allowed its Azure users to import data to its cloud by shipping hard drives to its data centers. It’s now going a step further with the preview launch of the 100 TB Azure Data Box, its answer to AWS’s 50… Read More

 Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has written an open letter apologizing for “mistakes we’ve made” following the announcement on Friday by London’s transport regulator that it was withdrawing licensing from Uber — having deemed it is not “fit and proper” to operate. Read More

 Microsoft, just like many of its competitors, has gone all in on machine learning. That emphasis is on full display at the company’s Ignite conference this where, where the company today announced a number of new tools for developers who want to build new A.I. models and users who simply want to make use of these pre-existing models — either from their own teams or from Microsoft.… Read More

 Last year, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, but even though the acquisition has long closed, Microsoft hasn’t yet done much with all of the data it gets from the social network. At its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, the company announced some first steps in integrating LinkedIn’s social graph with its Office products. Read More

 Ignite is Microsoft’s main annual conference for bringing together its enterprise users and IT community. It’s no surprise then, that security is one of the main topics at the event, with about almost 150 sessions dedicated to the topic. And just as unsurprisingly, Microsoft is also using the event to announce a number of new security features, largely around its Microsoft 365… Read More

 Unless you’re a regular Bing user, chances are you haven’t thought about Microsoft’s search engine all that much in recent years. While Microsoft has kept adding features to the service over time, its market share has remained pretty stable. At Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Orlando, however, Bing took center stage for a little while. Read More

 Microsoft today announced a major expansion to its Microsoft 365 offerings. The idea behind Microsoft 365 is to provide a single integrated solution that combines subscriptions to Office 365, Windows 10 and (depending on the plan you choose) the Enterprise Mobility and Security suite into a single bundle with prices that start around $12.50 per month and employee for the most basic tier.… Read More

 Cloudflare turns seven this week and it wants to give your network a present. Should your website come under Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, it will never charge you additional fees, or (and this is important) kick you off the network. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has pledged unmetered DDoS mitigation, regardless of the size of the attack and no matter what level of service you… Read More

 In case you didn’t know, Microsoft is hosting its annual Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida this week and while a lot of the event focuses on the company’s productivity apps, it wouldn’t be a Microsoft event without lots of talk about the Azure cloud computing platform, too. Among the updates to Azure today are the launch of reserved instances and the integration of… Read More

 Microsoft Teams, the company’s Slack competitor with deep integrations into the Office 365 apps, has seen a lot of pickup over the last few months, with over 125,000 organizations now using it in one form or another. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that the company today announced it is going all in on Teams as its core communications platform for the enterprise. Read More

 China’s Didi Chuxing is already well-known for making investments, but this time around the ride-sharing company has stepped beyond backing companies in its core industry with its latest deal. That’s because Didi has backed RenRenChe, China-based online peer-to-peer car marketplace, via a strategic investment that is confirmed at $200 million. It’s not clear what… Read More

 Elon Musk revealed the Spaceship Interplanetary Spaceship and Rocket at last year’s International Astronautical Congress (embedded below), detailing a very ambitious plan to get humans to Mars – and to help them stay there and colonize, and even commercialize, the red planet. This Friday, he’ll reveal updated details on SpaceX’s interplanetary plans. Last… Read More

 Accelo, a six-year old startup, is trying to solve a big problem for project-driven small businesses like architects, accountants and designers. These companies, which typically have less than 100 employees, don’t usually have access to software to get a complete view of their business operations. That’s where Accelo comes in. It has designed a set of tools specifically for… Read More