It’s a pretty captivating pitch: Andy Rubin, one of the guys who founded Android (and who lead the project within Google for eight years!) has a new company… and he’s building an Android phone. The “Essential Phone,” as it’s known. I’ve been carrying around an Essential Phone for a few days now. Here’s what I think so far. Read More
While VR has shown consumers a great deal of what’s possible when it comes to immersive experiences, the world of potential that VR opens to advertisers has not been explored so heavily,
Immersv, a mobile 360 VR ad network, wants to use the strengths of VR to improve mobile advertising, not only on headset but smartphones as well. For now, the startup is focusing on pre-roll and… Read More
Instagram inception, here we come. If somebody sends you a photo or video in a private conversation on Instagram, the app will now let you play around with the original photo so that you can reply in a creative way and keep the context of the conversation. If you receive a photo or video, there’s now a reply button in the conversation thread. If you tap on this button, the original photo… Read More
It was only a year ago that Di Somrville held the first Regional Pitchfest in the can’t-be-really-named-but-is-really-named town of Wagga Wagga. At the time, the event founder and entrepreneurially minded Somerville had no idea that the eyes of Australia Post were on her, and eager to help grow the pitch competition into a national event. Now, only a year later, all of you night owls… Read More
Uber co-founder, former CEO and current board member Travis Kalanick fired back at Benchmark Capital in legal documents filed Thursday, arguing that the venture capital firm’s lawsuit was initiated “as part of its public and personal attack” on him. The legal filing, first spotted by Axios, also posits that Benchmark’s claims are subject to mandatory arbitration, and… Read More
iOS 11, the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, is quite the game-changer for iPad owners.
We wrote that the software effectively turns an iPad into a mobile computer through a number of new features that go beyond previous limits with a focus on multi-tasking.
The new iOS is currently in beta, but when it is released to all it will bring a very different experience to… Read More
Slooh, a Connecticut-based company, makes it easy and now free to look at the night sky through any one of dozens of telescopes around the world. To use the service you simply log in and pick a telescope. If you want to take control you can begin to point the telescope at various spots in space or you can simply go along for the ride while a professional astronomer takes the reins. Slooh… Read More
Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone is now available to order and ships soon, ZeroCater expands to providing snacks and Fat Lama is my new favorite startup name. All this on Crunch Report! Read More
Gab, the conservative social network that has acted as a haven for people banned from the usual platforms, has been removed from the Google Play Store for violating the company’s hate speech policy, the company announced on Twitter. Apple removed it from the App Store in June for similar reasons. Read More
TouchID has always been a legal grey area when it came to cops and border patrol asking you to fork over your phone. But with the new update in iOS 11, that no longer seems to be a problem. Read More
Americans apply for more than 250 million new financial products each year, but the majority of those applications are completed on paper or over the phone. A startup called Original Tech wants to change that by providing white-label software to improve loan applications completed online. Read More
You don’t have to be rich or T-Pain to be “on a boat.” You can rent one plus a captain for the day from Boatsetter. And now it’s got boats in more than 300 locations around the U.S. since it just acquired rival maritime marketplace Boatbound. Read More
Cloud computing and the IoT have given rise to seemingly intractable security exposure. The good news is that a new technological advance could unleash the full promise of cloud computing and put IoT on the verge of everyday use by U.S. intelligence agencies and in the private sector. Called “homomorphic encryption,” it allows data to be queried and analyzed without decrypting it. Read More
The next standalone spin-off series set in the Star Wars universe could be focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi who took Luke Skywalker under his wing in the original series, and who also helped train the child who would become Darth Vader. Variety reports that Disney is in the early stages of development on the project, with Stephen Daldry in talks to potentially direct. Read More
You’ve probably had the experience of going to a website and seeing a lot of content that’s not really relevant. For the most part, a lot of this is organized in a way that’s either pre-defined or based on a limited number of signals that aims to sort of personalize the experience for a normal user. But as time goes on and the competition for eyeballs continues to heat up,… Read More
Stem cells have the potential to become any type of cell needed in the body. Forever Labs, a startup in Y Combinator’s latest batch, is preserving adult stem cells with the aim to help you live longer and healthier. Read More
The wait is over, hackathon fans. Disrupt SF 2017 is right around the corner, and with just a few short weeks until we kick off the best startup show in the Bay Area, we thought it was high time we released the first batch of tickets to the Disrupt SF Hackathon. Read More
The FCC’s claim that its commenting system was attacked on the night of May 7 has been the subject of considerable controversy, but not because of the attack itself. The agency has been so reluctant to release any substantive details about the attack or the countermeasures it has taken since that Congress is calling for an independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office. Read More
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has called for the implementation of a framework to govern how the internet’s gatekeepers deal with cases like The Daily Stormer. This comes after a number of tech companies have revoked support for the neo-Nazi website for its close association with the violent far-right demonstrations in Charlottesville. Seven-year-old Cloudflare took the step of… Read More
The problem of sexism is front and center in the technology industry right now, but for those not directly affected (read: men like me) the problem can languish in the middle: too close to see the scale of it, but not close enough to see the details. A new survey of tech workers fills out this picture nicely, and identifies interesting — and depressing — contrasts in… Read More
