A series of policy changes at Amazon that detail how advertising will be supported within Alexa’s voice-enabled apps, called “Skills,” have now had their first casualty: VoiceLabs. The startup was the leading way for third-party developers to make money from their Alexa applications, through the use of VoiceLab’s “Sponsored Messages.” Unlike traditional… Read More
Have you always wanted to show your messy room to hundreds of people? Want to get paid for the pleasure of streaming your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners? Feel a real need to share how long you can stare idly at your phone? CamSoda has a deal for you. CamSoda is a streaming cam service featuring men and women in various states of undress and it is now offering a unique life-streaming program… Read More
After years of struggling to make it part of my daily routine, I’ve started to suspect that if I were mindful enough to remember to meditate, then I probably wouldn’t need to meditate in the first place. To get the attention of people who, like me, spend more time thinking about meditating then they do actually meditating, Headspace has launched a new version of its app with… Read More
Slack is in the midst of raising another $500 million in financing at what could be a $5 billion valuation — money it will likely critically need as it goes after major corporate clients and construct a functional business — according to a report by Recode. Slack also got some interest with a $9 billion price tag from Amazon, according to a report from Bloomberg last night. All… Read More
A woman raped by her Uber driver in India is suing both the company and three current and former top executives after it was revealed Eric Alexander, the company’s president of business in Asia Pacific, had accessed and was carrying around her medical records. The woman, a Texas resident identified as Jane Doe in the case, is suing for intrusion into private affairs, public disclosure… Read More
Scopely just announced that it has raised $60 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Revolution Growth, a firm led by former AOL executives Steve Case and Ted Leonsis (AOL owns TechCrunch), which targets startups outside Silicon Valley and New York. (Scopely is headquartered in Los Angeles.) Revolution’s Donn Davis is joining Scopely’s board of directors, while… Read More
Qualcomm Technologies has been working on a wireless charging system for electric vehicles called Halo. Now it’s taken the idea a step further — a Halo on the go, if you will. The dynamic electric vehicle charging (DEVC) system can charge electric vehicles as they drive over the charger.
Halo DEVC, as its called, is in very early stages. Qualcomm set up a 100-meter test track at… Read More
Update: It happened! Snap fell down to its IPO price (for a few seconds) of $17 per share after its continued steady march south over the past several weeks. The company is now barely holding just above its IPO price. Snap’s last earnings report resulted in a disaster, and while the company still managed to stay above $20 for an extended period of time, a string of bad days for the… Read More
Lyft has set itself some concrete goals for its renewed commitment to the Paris climate agreement, in spite of Trump’s announcement that the U.S. as a nation would be pulling out of the accord. Those goals focus primarily on Lyft’s autonomous ambitions, and so are contingent on the ride hailing company accomplishing its self-driving vision at scale, but they’re laudable… Read More
Less than a week after acquiring Ticketfly from Pandora for $200 million, today Eventbrite has announced another deal to mark its deeper move into music events: the company will now show information about concerts and music festivals Spotify. Specifically, it will recommend Eventbrite-powered events relevant to the music people are listening to on the streaming music service and their… Read More
In recent years, GitHub has fundamentally changed developer workflows. By centralizing code on an easily accessible platform, the company was able to rapidly change the way people code. Following in these footsteps, Israeli startup Codota wants to further optimize workflows for the often neglected developer community — this time with machine intelligence. The company is announcing a… Read More
Hardware Club is not just a club — it’s now also a venture firm focused on hardware companies. The team has raised $28 million for the first closing of its inaugural fund from Bpifrance, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, Foxconn, Mistletoe and others. At its core, the vision of the club hasn’t changed much. I’ve already covered the original idea, and everything is still true… Read More
Another reminder that if you want perfect security or privacy online you shouldn’t expect every single bell & whistle of tech-enabled convenience to be handily on tap… Read More
A startup called Fairy wants to change the way consumers get their homes cleaned. Perhaps counterintuitively, the company is betting that by providing frequent, hotel-like housecleaning, it can actually lower the cost and provide a higher quality of service.
Now operating in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, Fairy has raised $4.1 million in funding from investors that include… Read More
Microsoft today announced a major change to how it will deliver new releases of Windows Server going forward. Instead of a release every few years (the last few major versions arrived in 2008, 2012 and 2016), Microsoft will now move to a semi-annual cycle that will see the company launch feature updates every spring and fall. This new release cadence, which is similar to what Microsoft is… Read More
Lip-syncing social network Musical.ly is getting into original content, thanks to new deals with Viacom, NBCU and Hearst, which will bring short-form video series to the app. However, unlike the original videos found on Snapchat – an app that’s often the next step up for the tween-age Musical.ly audience – these shows are designed to be interactive. That is, the shows… Read More
Airbnb has become of the more popular ways of travelling around Europe, offering visitors to cities and regions home-based alternatives to staying in impersonal or expensive hotels when they are away from home.
That hasn’t been without controversy, though, and so as it continues to grow — to an estimated 24 million stays by 2020 in the region — the company is embarking on… Read More
The developer training and recruitment service Andela announced its expansion into Uganda. The company―which recruits African software developers and places them at global companies―completed its first recruitment cycle in Kampala. The Uganda opening adds to offices in Nairobi, Lagos, New York, and San Francisco. It also marks year three of Andela’s rise as a VC backed, revenue… Read More
Ever since 8bitdo updated their NES30 Pro and other game controllers with Nintendo Switch support, I’ve been using them as the primary way to play on the console. Now at E3, 8bitdo has revealed a new model that might just become the best Switch controller of all time.
The SNES30 Pro (and SFC30 Pro, as its Super Famicom coloured variant is called) has all the buttons you need for full… Read More
The first iteration of Amazon’s Dash Wand wasn’t long for this world. The company trialed the barcode scanner with select Prime Fresh customers in California, but the hardware didn’t seem to really go anywhere. Instead the company switched tactics, moving to those now familiar single product buttons. Now that Amazon’s all bullish about hardware, thanks to the… Read More
