If you’re in a big city like New York City, you’re probably used to walking around the block away from where you live to the corner shop and picking up a jug of milk or some dishwashing detergent. But Paul McDonald (who says he has not lived in New York), who was at Google for more than 13 years, wants to collapse that distance between walking to that store to pick something up… Read More
It’s only taken six years, but the popular project management tool Trello — which was recently acquired by Atlassian — today launched its desktop apps for Mac, with the Windows app launching tomorrow. Until now, Trello only lived in the browser and while it worked really well, it also meant that it never quite felt integrated into any workflow that wasn’t… Read More
Bad news for traditional pay TV: cord cutting is accelerating at a pace faster than previously estimated. According to a new industry report from eMarketer, there will be 22.2 million cord cutters ages 18 and older this year – a figure that’s up 33.2 percent over 2016. The firm said it’s had to revise its forecast as the pace of cord cutting has increased. Previously, it… Read More
Asus, the Taiwanese hardware firm known for its ZenBooks, ZenFones and Zenbo the cute, humanoid robot, is stepping into the VC game with the launch of a $50 million venture capital fund. Managed in partnership with Fenox Venture Capital, it will focus on strategic investments with startups that want to enter Asian markets. Read More
Nobody likes to lose. Especially gamers. But unlike other sports or activities, video games aren’t conducive to practice.
Sure, you could play Destiny 2 until your thumbs bleed. But when it comes to fine tuning — maybe you’re slow to react to enemies on the top left side of the map, for example — video games don’t offer the environment to practice, practice… Read More
The iPhone X is billed as a future-focused device with a lot of cutting edge tech, available at a premium. It kind of reminds me of the positioning of the original MacBook Air, or the new MacBook, when those two devices were first introduced – tomorrow’s tech, available today, but for a bit more money and with a few trade-offs as a result of being ahead of its time. And the iPhone… Read More
While Tampa Bay residents are beginning the process of removing the sandbags from their homes and getting back to the business of daily living in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, the city’s multi-millionaire real estate developer, Jeff Vinik, is busy with plans of his own. Last year, Vinik and Bill Gates’ Cascadia fund jointly acquired a swath of waterfront property in Tampa… Read More
Heptio, the startup founded by Kubernetes co-founders Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round led by Madrona Venture partners. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel Partners also joined in this round, which comes less than a year after the company’s $8.5 million Series A round. Read More
Facebook has been quietly testing a new standalone group video chat app, called Bonfire, which allows up to eight friends to engage in conversation as well as use special effects, similar to those you’d find in apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
But upon hands-on testing, TechCrunch has learned Bonfire also lets users join chats straight from Messenger without downloading Bonfire itself. Read More
A collective Internet gasp went up yesterday when, once again, the Apple Watch beat most major watch companies in terms of revenue. It’s not surprising not that the Apple Watch outsold Rolex and Omega and other luxury watch makers. What is surprising is that Rolex and Omega are still fighting this losing battle. Think about the Rolex market, for example. While I would wager that almost… Read More
Facebook wants content creators to earn money, but not at the expense of the family friendly social network it’s built, or the integrity of its advertising clients. So today Facebook established formal rules for what kinds of content can’t be monetized with Branded Content, Instant Articles, and mid-roll video Ad Breaks. These include depictions of death or incendiary social… Read More
Apple announced the latest iPhone yesterday. It’s thinner, faster and has a better screen than the previous model. But of course it does. That’s how these things go. But the phone also lacks things I consider part of my daily life. I’m lost. This iPhone is not for me.
Without these two features, I’ll stick with the boring and passé iPhone 8. The iPhone X follows a… Read More
From Frankenstein to I, Robot, we have for centuries been intrigued with and terrified of creating beings that might develop autonomy and free will. And now that we stand on the cusp of the age of ever-more-powerful artificial intelligence, the urgency of developing ways to ensure our creations always do what we want them to do is growing. For some in AI, like Mark Zuckerberg, AI is just… Read More
More details about former Sequoia venture partner Yinglan Tan’s new fund have emerged after an SEC filing confirmed that it has raised $25 million for its maiden fund, and it made its first investment.
Tan, who was with Sequoia’s Singapore office for five years before leaving this summer, is thought to be starting Insignia Venture Partners to focus on Southeast Asia’s… Read More
Affectiva, the startup that spun out of the MIT Media Lab several years ago with tools designed to understand facial emotions, announced a new cloud API today that can detect a range of emotion in human speech.
When we speak, our voices offer subtle and not so subtle cues about our emotions. Whether our voices are tight or loud or soft can give valuable clues about our feelings. Humans can… Read More
Fair warning: The above clip is filled with uncensored profanity and other content definitely not safe for work. The full trailer for Nick Kroll’s animated Big Mouth show, which is streaming all episodes on Netflix on September 29, reveals a show with a lot of candid discussion about what it’s like to be a kid dealing with the raging onset of hormones and young adulthood. This show… Read More
North Korea’s hackers have been linked with many attacks, including the 2014 Sony hack, but it looks like the totalitarian state is now targeting bitcoin, and crypto coin exchanges in particular, with its hacking teams.
That’s according to a new report from cybersecurity firm FireEye, which claims to have tracked at least five attacks on bitcoin exchanges, or individual bitcoin… Read More
Adam Coates, director of Baidu’s Silicon Valley AI Lab, has left the company. A source confirmed the exit and Coates has updated his LinkedIn reflecting the change. Coates joined the Chinese search giant back in May of 2014 to lead a California-based team of 50 machine learning developers. Baidu has built up an established proficiency in natural language processing. While at Baidu,… Read More
Zomato, the global restaurant guide and food on-demand service, has made an acquisition to shore up its delivery business on home turf after it completed a deal for Runnr. The acquisition has been rumored since May and is much-anticipated, as Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal himself acknowledged in an announcement. The all-stock deal was previously pegged at $40 million by Indian media, but… Read More
At the unveiling of Apple’s new flagship smartphone yesterday, the iPhone X, CEO Tim Cook said it was something the company’s staff had been working on for a decade. The new interface looks fluid and intuitive. But it also — if you’ve been smartphone watching for long enough — engenders a distinct feeling of déjà vu… Read More
