I was recently looking at a slide in the pitch deck of an AR startup and there was a graph mapping the addressable markets of individual smartphone AR platforms by devices. When rounding to the hundredth of a percent, Google’s addressable market with Tango makes up 0.00% of the smartphone market.
That’s a bit of a problem when Apple is about to bring smartphone AR to hundreds of… Read More
There was a time when two-factor identification (2FA) was nice to have, but times have changed as hackers get ever more sophisticated and users need whatever edge they can get. Perhaps that’s why Okta, the cloud identity company that went public earlier this year, announced that it’s making 2FA the standard for all its customers.
They made the announcement at their annual Oktane… Read More
Google has been experimenting with smartphone AR since it first showed off Project Tango in 2014. Three years later the company has some great technology to show off, but very little in the way of actual users. Today, the company is releasing a developer preview of ARCore, a platform that will deliver AR capabilities to Android smartphones at a scale Tango was never able to reach. Read More
Earlier this year, YouTube introduced a major redesign of its desktop website which delivered a cleaner look and new features like a “dark mode” for nighttime watching. Today, YouTube is taking this update out of beta, and making it available to all users. In addition, the company is extending the design and select new features to its mobile app, and is unveiling an updated logo… Read More
Marvel’s upcoming Inhumans might be the first truly bad thing to come out of its expanded cinematic TV and movie universe, judging by the early looks we’re getting at the series, which premieres on ABC on November 3.
The new look has a lot more of characters beyond the wooden Black Bolt, and the mad Maxwell, his brother. But we see more of that really cheesy looking Medusa hair… Read More
Busy parents could benefit a lot from ridesharing, but they can’t send their children alone in an Uber until they are 18-years-old. That’s why several startups are trying to build an “Uber for kids” concept, acting as a shuttle to take kids from school to soccer practice or home. There’s HopSkipDrive and Shuddle (which shut down), but now a newer entrant, Zūm… Read More
Perhaps you’ve heard of Lore if you’re a podcast fan – the long-running audio show from creator Aaron Mahnke has a strong following. Strong enough that it got picked up for an original TV series, which is set to debut on Amazon Prime Video on October 13, just in time for Halloween.
The six-episode TV series adaptation will mimic the podcast in form and content, with… Read More
Amazon this morning announced a new feature for its Echo devices called “multi-room music,” which allows owners with more than one Echo to control where their music is played, or even sync it across a group of Echo devices using voice commands. For example, you’ll be able to tell Alexa to play your music in the living room, play music upstairs or downstairs, or even just… Read More
As Rafiki once said, “It is time.” Tinder Gold, the dating app’s new premium subscription tier (which includes a feature that lets you see who’s already liked you without any swiping) is finally rolling out to the U.S. Tinder Gold and Likes You were originally tested in Argentina, Australia, Canada and Mexico at the end of June. Today, however, the the feature rolls out… Read More
We get a lot of weed-related pitches at TechCrunch, but most of them don’t come with the pedigree of Herb‘s investors. Herb is announcing today that it has raised $4.1 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Slow Ventures, Buddy Media co-founder Michael Lazerow, Shiva Rajarama, Liquid 2 Ventures (the firm led by football legend Joe… Read More
Uber has had a one-month suspension of its service in the Philippines lifted early after it agreed to pay nearly $10 million in fines and aid for drivers affected by the service being suspended, Reuters reports. Read More
Another major automaker is setting up a dedicated joint venture to build EVs for the growing demand in China, joining Ford and Volkswagen: This time, it’s Nissan-Renault, which will work with China’s Dongfeng Motor, an automaker it partnered with last year to open its first factory in China. Automakers from outside China basically need a local dancing partner in order to make and… Read More
Spire Global is a data analytics provider that uses information provided by a constellation of orbital nanosatellites to track ships on the high seas – a service that’s valuable to maritime shipping companies and other clients. Now, thanks to general improvements in both the in-space and ground-based technology Spire uses to collect its data, it’s adding two new products to… Read More
Life insurance. Everybody needs it, but these days fewer and fewer folks actually get it. It’s a no-brainer as far as insurance goes, because unless you live (and have died) beyond “The Wall”, or live with the Walking Dead, you’re going to face the second of Ben Franklin’s certainties at some point. Bestow joins the ranks of startups that are purporting to… Read More
Adobe announced a number of new capabilities for its Adobe Campaign email marketing tools. Most of these are available now (better dashboards, new email templates, better support for multilingual campaigns), but the most interesting new features the company showed me during a briefing earlier this week are still a while out. It’s worth stressed that these upcoming features are currently… Read More
When VMware, Pivotal and Google announced a containerization partnership this morning at VMworld, it sounded more like the introduction to a joke — Google, VMware and Pivotal walked into a bar… But in fact, it’s probably not a coincidence that these three companies have joined together. They actually have a long and intertwined history — with former VMware co-founder… Read More
There is a general misconception that Apple is strictly about consumer tools, but the fact is that the company has a big presence in the enterprise just by the sheer number of iPhones and iPads in the business world. It also has some high-profile partnerships with hefty enterprise vendors like IBM, SAP and Cisco. Today, Apple announced that it is building on those relationships with a brand… Read More
Sonos is almost certainly going to throw its hat in the smart speaker ring on October 4, when it’s hosting an event in NYC. We know about its forthcoming voice-enabled speaker because such a device was filed with the FCC, and the filing describes a speaker with voice control and far field microphones capable of picking up voice commands in a big room and filtering out background noise.… Read More
Pivotal, VMware and Google have teamed up on a containerization project that the companies say should simplify creating, deploying and managing container projects at scale. The companies are taking what is a set of open-source products and providing a commercial underpinning with the various parties in the partnership bringing the product to market. Read More
Even as Amazon steps up a groceries war in the US following its $13.7BN acquisition of Whole Foods — cutting prices at the chain this weekend to amp up the pressure on rival Walmart — other supermarket players are figuring out their own strategic responses to Jeff Bezos’ big food fight. Read More
