Waze introduced a feature on Android that allows users of the app to record custom voice prompts, including turn-by-turn directions, and now that feature is available to iOS users, too. The latest update to the iOS Waze app adds Voice Recorder support, letting you make your own voice packs – and share them with friends and family. The Voice Recorder feature guides you through the… Read More
Amazon is deeply discounting its two most popular Alexa devices today, the Echo and Echo Dot, as the retailer’s annual Prime Day sale kicks off. Starting tonight at 6 PM PT, the Echo will receive a 50 percent price cut, making it $89.99, and the Echo Dot will drop by $15, bringing it down to $34.99. Meanwhile, Amazon’s bluetooth speaker with Alexa, the Amazon Tap, is $50 off, making… Read More
Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman starring the voice of Will Arnett as the titular horse man, is coming back to Netflix on September 8. The series will have new episodes available for streaming then, back for its fourth season on the on-demand video service. BoJack first debuted in 2014, then a pioneering effort for Netflix’s original programming, and its first major… Read More
French startup Foodles thinks office canteens should work more like food delivery startups. The company delivers fresh food every morning into smart fridges that sit in your office. Employees can then buy cheap lunches using a card or a phone. Think about Foodles as a sort of hybrid company between vending machines and those popular full-stack delivery startups in Paris, such as Frichti,… Read More
TechCrunch wants to ensure a strong line-up in Startup Alley for certain categories that have investors riled up, so we’re offering three, free exhibit and demo spots in each of 10 hot categories. TechCrunch editorial will pick the top startups from the pool of applicants. The lucky companies will exhibit for one day at no charge, plus get two tickets to all three days of Disrupt. Read More
Construction – the actual process of putting brick on brick to build something – is still in the dark ages. While there is plenty of technology out there to help plan massive projects few people are thinking hard about what it takes to actually build. Luckily Bassem Hamdy is one the case. Hamdy works for Procore Technologies where he and his team build products to help… Read More
Microsoft’s cloud strategy has long focused on the kind of hybrid cloud deployments that allow enterprises to run workloads in a public cloud like Azure and in their own data centers. Azure Stack, its project for bringing the core Azure services into the corporate data center, is the logical conclusion of this. If developers can target a single platform for both the public and… Read More
The best current hardware experience for VR is also now one of the most affordable: Oculus Rift and the Oculus Touch Controllers are reduced to just $399 for both for the remainder of the summer, or the next six weeks. The deal brings the Rift and Touch Controllers to price parity with the PlayStation VR, and undercuts significantly the HTC Vive. The pricing isn’t permanent, but… Read More
Editor’s note: This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. This is a condensed version of several Wirecutter guides; you can find links to the full guides in the discussions below. If you’re an online bargain hunter, chances are, you’ve marked your calendar for Amazon’s Prime Day, Tuesday, July 11. The site will… Read More
Partech Ventures has raised so many funds over the past couple of years that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. This time, the VC firm is closing the fundraising of Partech International Ventures VII. With $450 million under management (€400 million), the team plans to use this money for Series A and B investments. This was the upper limit of this fund, so Partech ended up raising… Read More
Payment enabler Stripe just announced two significant tie-ins that could help its pool of merchants make money from consumers in China. U.S. firm Stripe said today that it has agreed to global deals with Alipay and WeChat Pay, two digital services that dominate consumer spending in China. Alipay, which is managed by Alibaba affiliate firm Ant Financial, counts over 500 million users, while… Read More
Four volunteers at China’s top aeronautics university will live in a sealed laboratory for 200 days without any outside interaction as the country prepares to send its first manned mission to the moon. According to the People’s Daily (one of the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspapers), the group started their stint on Sunday in the 160-square-meter lab at the… Read More
Marketers love slicing and dicing by region: APAC, NorAm, LatAm, MENA, ANZ, etc. But what if the best way to slice is no longer by geography, but by age? Marketers may need to geo-locate for one-off campaigns, but as technology adoption influences our daily routines, forward-thinking entrepreneurs and investors can look to how generations across geographies are more similar than different… Read More
In a series of tweets on Sunday, U.S. President Trump recapped his lengthy meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Apparently, the two world leaders discussed collaborating on cybersecurity together.
Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..
— Donald J. Trump… Read More
The coming years could see the next great land rush across the US and many other countries worldwide, but it might not even involve land. Instead, the next trend for savvy investors could be fleets of autonomous vehicles.
A previous article posited the idea that the retail industry may be about to experience its greatest disruption since the rise of online shopping. In a market that’s… Read More
A future in which drones deliver our goods is not far off.
Giants like Amazon are working on drone delivery, and once regulatory hurdles are overcome, the rest of the market will want to compete.
That’s where FlyTrex comes in.
We visited the company, based in Tel Aviv, which is an end-to-end product that offers hardware and software so businesses can deliver their goods via drone.
The… Read More
Beat Shazam is one of those TV game shows that you don’t just watch — you can play along at home, using the Shazam app. In fact, the company recently added the ability to sync your gameplay to recorded footage of the show.
Let’s back up a second, for people who haven’t watched: Beat Shazam is hosted by Jamie Foxx and premiered on May 25, on Fox. During each episode… Read More
It’s here: The first ever production Model 3 has rolled off Tesla’s assembly line and into the possession of its owner – Elon Musk. The founder and CEO tweeted pictures of the new vehicle, which he only got because the actual first pre-order customer gifted Musk his place in the queue as a birthday present. Alongside the pics, Musk tweeted an interesting bit of trivia about… Read More
Technology makes things better. Not morally, of course: military technology kills and maims people more efficiently, surveillance technology invades privacy more pervasively, and so forth. But improved technology leads to more output from less input for any system. Almost a tautology, right? I mean, that’s the whole point. So why, in our technology-laced world, do certain domains keep… Read More
Back in December, Google finally added accessibility details to Maps. It was a long awaited addition, but an extremely welcome one for the more than three million people in the U.S. who require wheelchair accessibility. As we noted at the time, however, the available information still left a lot to be desired. Maps has currently collected accessibility data for almost seven million places,… Read More
