Alexa’s latest trick is offering a hands-free TV viewing experience, that will allow consumers to turn on or off their television, change inputs, fast forward, rewind and more, without having to first invoke a specific skill, or even press a button on their remote. Instead, makers of smart home devices are today adding new “entertainment controls” to their own skills, which… Read More
Seattle-based BloomAPI is announcing a $2.4 million seed round this morning for its solution to the broken medical records release process. It’s no secret that the entire U.S. healthcare system is held back by antiquated technology — but unlike many competitors, BloomAPI offers a solution that works with, and not against, the old-school technologies. Read More
A lot of the sensor hardware being developed by component suppliers in the autonomous driving industry focus on getting a clear picture of what’s happening outside the car, but Vayyar’s new 3D sensors provide a detailed look inside the car, including information about passengers. The 3D sensor tech also doesn’t use any optical image capture, so it’s better from a… Read More
Since launching five years ago, Blend has helped major financial institutions make lending decisions to consumers, in many cases narrowing the time it takes to close a mortgage by seven to 10 days. Today the company is releasing a mobile app that it believes will speed up the process even faster by allowing consumers to more easily communicate with their loan officer. Read More
Jet, the online retailer bought by Walmart last year, has struck a deal with smart access provider Latch in an effort to make deliveries easier for its customers in urban areas.
Over 100,000 residents living in 1,000 buildings will get free and full access to Latch’s residential “R” system for the exterior door of their building, with the install paid for by a “joint… Read More
Segment has raised $64 million in Series C funding, with the Y Combinator Continuity Fund and GV leading the round. The continuity fund is the $700 million fund led by former Twitter COO Ali Rowghani. It selectively writes checks for YC startups as they raise bigger rounds. As part of the deal, Rowghani will be joining Segment’s board of directors. In the funding announcement, he said… Read More
Micro-investing app Stash has raised an additional $40 million in Series C funding, the company announced this morning, following rapid growth in terms of sign-ups from new users – 86 percent of whom are first-time investors. The startup’s app is designed to help ease people into investing by allowing anyone to start with as little as $5, then build a portfolio you contribute more… Read More
We throw around the word disruptor a lot in the startup world, especially at TechCrunch. But Framebridge, a custom framing startup launched in 2014, is actually worthy of that title. And today Framebridge is announcing they’ve closed a $16.7M Series B round, with Gordon Segal, co-founder of Crate and Barrel joining in as an investor. The round means that the startup has now raised… Read More
Facebook is set to reveal a standalone Oculus virtual reality headset sometime later this year, Bloomberg reports, with a ship date of sometime in 2018. The headset will work without requiring a tethered PC or smartphone, according to the report, and will be branded with the Oculus name around the world, except in China, where it’ll carry Xiaomi trade dress and run some Xiaomi software… Read More
As the Brits prepare to exit the EU in the coming years, it’s going to require that they have a set of services based on British soil. Google helped solve one cloud localization problem today when it announced it was opening a shiny new London region. For companies that require data sovereignty, that is, a legal requirement to keep the data in-country, the EU was fine up until now, but… Read More
Logitech has updated the Alexa skill for its Harmony line of universal remotes, making it very easy to control your home theater with your voice if you have an Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show or Dash Wand. The Harmony skill used to require that you asked Alexa to tell Harmony to perform a lot of commands, but now you can just speak to Alexa directly, using simple commands like “Alexa, turn up… Read More
Saucey, an L.A.-based alcohol delivery company, has raised $5.4 million in Series A funding led by Bullpen Capital, with participation from earlier and new investors, including Blumberg Capital, Structure Capital and HashtagOne. Saucey, which has now raised $10.2 million altogether, is competing against a dizzying number of alcohol-delivery companies. In addition to direct rivals… Read More
Cisco has made another acquisition in the enterprise security space — underscoring the ongoing market demand for security services amid a growing threat of cyber breaches and malicious hacking among businesses that are moving to cloud-based infrastructures. Today, the IT giant announced that it has acquired Observable Networks, a company based out of St Louis that provides real-time… Read More
BMW is doing more with partner Microsoft to bring productivity to its vehicles. After adding Office 365 communications features to its BMW 5 series late last year, it’s now also bringing Skype for Business to its infotainment features, making it possible for users to connect to Skype meetings in the car. The Skype integration is going to be integrated into BMW’s iDrive system, and… Read More
Shopify has another sales channel, in addition to its existing avenues including Amazon, Facebook, BuzzFeed, Pinterest and more. The latest addition is eBay, which hosts a large audience of potential customers, giving Shopify store owners one more opportunity to get their wares in front of folks. The new Shopify integration with eBay will include immediate syncing of inventory info,… Read More
WeWork has named a new COO, Jen Berrent, a career attorney who joined the company nearly three years ago as its chief legal officer and chief cultural officer and was promoted into the role. Miguel McKelvey, who cofounded the co-working juggernaut eight years ago and has served as its chief creative officer since, now takes on the title of chief culture officer. In a call yesterday, both… Read More
As a public service I’m putting up this post so when your parents message you with a warning about a hacker named “Jayden K. Smith” who “has the system connected to your Facebook account” you can easily retort with a well-argued piece of journalism. The Jayden K. Smith message is a hoax. No hacker “has the system” connected to your Facebook account and… Read More
One of the great advantages of the cloud is that your vendor is supposed to takes care of all the hard management bits for you — including backup. While that’s true for the most part, the vendor can’t help you recover data if one of your employees makes an error that results in data loss or corruption. That’s where OwnBackup comes in. It’s a back-up service for… Read More
Researchers have long thought about storing data in DNA and, so far, it seems to be working. They’ve already stuffed a book into DNA and Microsoft is experimenting with a process to store larger amounts of data – just imagine trying to defragment a DNA hard drive. Now, after years of research, a group at Harvard have successfully stored a short movie in E.coli DNA. The system… Read More
Spotinst, a service that helps businesses optimize their cloud utilization and reduce their cloud computing cost through the use of Amazon’s EC2 spot instances, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A round led by Intel Capital, with participation from Vertex Ventures and Springtime Ventures. This brings Spotinst’s funding to date to $17 million. The original… Read More
