Google Sheets is getting smarter today. After adding the machine learning-powered “Explore” feature last year, which lets you ask natural language questions about your data, it’s now expanding this feature to also automatically build charts for you. This means you can now simply ask Sheets to give you a “bar chart for fidget spinner sales” and it will… Read More
Facebook is revamping its photo album feature with the ability to add videos, check-ins, text posts to albums, follow friends’ albums so you’re notified when they’re updated, and display “featured” albums on your profile to highlight your favorite collections. Facebook is also simplifying the ability to add contributors to a collaborative album, which was an… Read More
Xbox Game Pass, the all-you-can game monthly subscription service for Xbox One, is now available to anyone who owns the console. The service went live for Xbox Gold members last week, but is now open for anyone who both A) has an Xbox One console and B) wants to plunk down $9.99 per month to access the library of over 100 games, including Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles. Game Pass… Read More
Robots are good at a few simple things. They can lift and carry huge objects, fly around like dragonflies, and murder our families while we watch, their cold circuits flitting with nascent feelings of remorse and anger. But they can’t stack rocks very well. This is because rocks are all different. However, imagine a situation when a robotic arm needs to move rubble or build a foundation… Read More
One of Alexa’s more practical, everyday uses is setting timers – helpful when cooking, remembering to perform some task, or alerting kids it’s bedtime, among other things. Today, Amazon is improving its timers by allowing users to name their different ones. This will make it easier to use multiple timers simultaneously, Amazon says. Plus, since many Alexa customers were… Read More
Microsoft today launched version 2.0 of what is now called the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit. This open-source toolkit, which was previously known as CNTK, is Microsoft’s competitor to similar tools like TensorFlow, Caffe and Torch, and, while the first version was able to challenge many of its competitors in terms of speed, this second version puts an emphasis on usability. Read More
What’s raised over $6.9 billion dollars in funding, exited or IPO’ed over 95 times and delivered over 655 pitches? TechCrunch Startup Battlefield. Applications for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF are now open. We’re searching for new, innovative startups to launch and compete this September at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Read More
Getting to display for free in Startup Alley at Disrupt is kind of like a dream. For several startups planning to attend Disrupt SF 2017, that dream is about to become a reality. The Featured Pavilions rolled out at Disrupt SF and Disrupt London in 2016, but we’ve kicked it up a notch for 2017. Instead of a single pavilion, there will be 14 Featured Pavilions at Disrupt SF. Read More
Code rules everything around me. And you. Really: be it the stoplight you stared at this morning, or the train you rode in on, or the lil’ robot vacuum keeping your floor ever-so-slightly cleaner while you’re away, code is everywhere. But even for people who’ve put the time in to learn to program, jumping from software to hardware can be a challenge — even if said… Read More
The European Commission is trumpeting what it dubs “significant progress” on hate speech takedowns by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft vs their performance six months prior. Though it also cautions some challenges remain. Read More
As Content Delivery Networks (CDN) market leaders like Akamai and CloudFlare grapple with technological shifts, some innovators like Teridion, Signal Sciences and Section.io (in which I am an investor) are making rapid advances. The CDN market, estimated at $5bn today, is anticipated to be over $10bn by 2019. While the market is growing rapidly, can the giants learn to dance? How are the… Read More
High Times, the most prestigious brand in pot, has been valued at $70 million in a deal that sees it selling a 60% majority stake for roughly $42 million to investment firm Oreva Capital. Originally a marijuana enthusiasts magazine founded in 1974, High Times has blossomed into a set up web properties and the Cannabis Cup marijuana contest event series. With wide scale marijuana… Read More
Microsoft today is launching a completely revamped version of its Skype application, with a new set of features that draw obvious inspiration from messaging rivals, like Messenger and Snapchat. Yes, that means Skype now has its own Stories-like feature, which it’s calling Highlights, as well as a redesign that puts the camera only a swipe away from your chats, among other things. The… Read More
TechCrunch is holding its first ever event focused solely on robotics on July 17 at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, Mass., and today we’re really pleased to roll out the agenda for TC Sessions: Robotics. Read More
Plenty dismissed modularity (the concept of making a phone’s innards swappable and upgradeable) the first time around. And for good reason. Like just about every other gimmick in smartphoneland, the idea has been tried and abandoned more times than anyone cares to mention. With the announcement of the second generation Moto Z, however, the Motorola is not only committed to the idea… Read More
The rigorous new Chinese cybersecurity laws which we wrote about last November took effect today. They’re designed to give China’s central government more direct control over the operations of internet-based companies operating in the country. As we wrote last November: The regulation would require instant messaging services and other internet companies to require users to… Read More
Media streaming app Plex has been around (and great) since before set-top streaming boxes were even properly a thing, but on Thursday it added Live TV integration and DVR capabilities, which make it even more useful. Nvidia is doing everything it can to make its Shield streaming Android TV box the best Plex partner around, too, and a new version of the Shield software adds support not only… Read More
Plex is doubling down on its support for capturing over-the-air signals from digital antennas this morning, with the announcement that it will now not only let users record TV programs, it will also allow them to watch live TV. The result is a low-cost, do-it-yourself version of a live TV streaming service – a popular new category in the streaming market, which offers a pay-TV live… Read More
Apple may finally get overtaken by Android in developer revenues this year (or so the analysts say), but today the iPhone maker passed a milestone of its own: the company said it has passed $70 billion in payouts to app developers, up from $50 billion about a year ago, after taking its commission. And despite the fact that new smartphone purchases appear to have fallen off a cliff as many… Read More
Baidu has two new German auto industry heavyweights on its side in the race to develop autonomous driving technology. Both Bosch and Continental are now partnered up with the Chinese internet giant to work together on not only automated driving, but also on connected cars in general and mobility services. Both Continental and Bosch are key auto industry suppliers, and this partnership is… Read More
