Time waits for no entrepreneur, and you have exactly one week left to submit your application to the Startup Battlefield taking place at Disrupt San Francisco 2017. The event takes place September 18-20 at Pier 48, and there’s no better way to launch your early-stage startup. The clock is ticking. Put down the Red Bull, take a break from coding and apply today. Read More
One of the promises of voice-based computing is the ability to make home automation simpler – something that major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple and Google, are now tackling with their own voice assistants and smart speakers. But their solutions are still somewhat clunky, both in terms of the software interface for configuring your smart home and the voice commands you use to… Read More
As more and more product images get shared on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, ShareIQ says it can help brands understand what’s going on. Founder and CEO Brian Killen used to work as the head of strategy at marketing company Acxiom, and he recalled being told by a retail marketing executive, “I see my pictures all over Pinterest and websites and all over the globe,… Read More
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital podcast, where we dig into the hype, the dollars and, recently, the down exits. This week was a fun one. Matthew Lynley is out on vacation, so TechCrunch’s own Megan Rose Dickey (the current host of Bullish and general badass) joined Katie Roof and myself — Alex Wilhelm — to dive into the news of the week. Read More
George Hotz is fidgeting in his living room, wearing dark shades and a giant comma on his t-shirt as he shows me his company’s latest product, an $88 universal car interface called Panda. Hotz both lives and works in a residential San Francisco neighborhood with a team of 20-somethings who are helping him build Comma.ai, the self-driving car startup Hotz founded to take on Tesla. Read More
Tesla will up its game in the renewable energy storage market with the largest lithium-ion battery storage facility in the world, to be built for Australia’s Hornsdale Wind Farm. The facility will use Tesla’s commercial battery storage Powerpack modules, which will store energy generated from the farm’s turbines during peak generation hours and make it available when the… Read More
The Panoptic Studio is a new body scanner created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that will be used to understand body language in real situations. The scanner, which looks like something Doc Brown would stick Marty in to prevent him from committing fratricide, creates hundreds of videos of participants inside the massive dome interacting, talking, and arguing. The team has… Read More
The tinging of tiny hammers from the heart of Dwarf Mountains may now be lost to the mists of time but you, my friend, can still make magically complex metallic contrivances in the comfort of your own barrow/home. I point to Time 4 Machine, a selection of metal models made the creator of the wooden uGears, Denis Okhrimenko. The models range from a table hockey set with moving players to a… Read More
French startup Side raised another $5.7 million with Xavier Niel leading the round. As the name suggests, Side lets students make some money on the side by working for companies for a few days or weeks. It’s a marketplace that helps you scale your workforce for a product launch, peak season and more. Aglaé Ventures, Jacques-Antoine Granjon and others are also participating in… Read More
QVC acquires HSN for 2.1 billion, RED is working on a smartphone, SoundCloud loses its San Francisco and London offices and Microsoft is laying off thousands of people. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
The snake has long been one of the most compelling demos out of Carnegie Mellon’s robotics lab. Inspired by the reptile of the same name, its long, skinny build makes it perfect for squeezing into tight spaces, guided by the camera embedded in its head. It can wind around rubble and coil around and climb poles — all in all, a pretty impressive piece of engineering. Read More
The slow and painful demise of Jawbone is finally coming to an end, as yet another effort to rejuvenate the business is beginning under a familiar name. After a multi-year struggle to maintain relevance in the consumer wearable market, Jawbone is now liquidating — and some of the driving forces behind the original company are forming a new business called Jawbone Health Hub. Read More
The white glove legal battle between two of the most important companies in mobile technologies is getting a lot hotter. Today, Qualcomm levied accusations against Apple suggesting that the Cupertino tech giant was infringing on six patents that aided iPhone battery life. Qualcomm wants U.S. trade regulators to ban imports of the affected iPhone models.
“Apple continues to use… Read More
It’s time for the big G-20 summit in Hamburg, and Russian phone customizers Caviar are commemorating the occasion with a very special Nokia 3310 (the new one). Encased in the best metals, titanium and gold, the back features a touching double profile of Trump and Putin. Only 149,000 rubles, or about $2,500. Read More
MIT’s Camera Culture group has been able to successfully capture a high-resolution 3D scan of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull using about $150 worth of equipment and some free software. The skull, which belongs to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, was discovered in 1990 and is the largest and most complete T. rex skull yet found. Read More
Hey St. Louis, come hang out tonight. I’m going to be passing through “the Gateway to the West” today and thought it’d be great to meet any and all of y’all who might want to come out and say hello. Read More
Sometimes, it seems like every possible on-demand service that could be created has already come along — and, in some cases, gone away. But Recycle Track Systems (RTS), a two-year-old, New York-based waste and recycling management technology company, serves to remind that there remain plenty of opportunities for startups looking to turn our smartphones into lucrative businesses. Read More
Camera companies have had to adapt their business models quickly over the past decade to account for the rise of smartphone cameras. Part of that has involved some interesting developments on the high end. RED has built incredibly high-powered cameras that have become the darling of many in the film industry; now they’re setting their sights on the smartphone market with what seems to be… Read More
The Nintendo Switch online app finally has a confirmed release date: July 21st. The app is designed as an extension (and requirement) for using Switch online services, with game-specific features that increase your engagement in the iOS/Android app. Read More
Lightricks, the maker of the popular selfie-correcting app Facetune, is debuting a new photo-editing app today called Enlight Photofox. This is the second time that Lightricks has launched the next generation of an existing app as an entirely new, standalone application — a strategy that’s still somewhat rare on today’s App Store, outside of sequels to games. Read More
