Sony’s mammoth 13-inch Digital Paper tablet, essentially a huge Kindle you can write on, is still a pretty rare sight, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. So I’m glad the company is doubling down on this unique device type and making some significant improvements with a new model. Read More
The problem with tiny robots, if there can really be said to be one, is that you can’t put enough stuff on them. Cameras and motors don’t shrink down very well, meaning if you want your robot to grab something, you’d better come up with a new way to see it and hold onto it. And that’s just what Finnish researchers have done with this bio-inspired, super-small gripper! Read More
Bulletin, the startup that describes itself as “WeWork for retail space,” is announcing that it has raised $2.2 million in seed funding. The idea is to give businesses — particularly online brands — access to brick-and-mortar retail space without the cost or commitment of a traditional lease. Read More
Mercedes-Benz announced the price of its new electric 2017 Smart Fortwo: $23,800 for the hard-top coupe and $28,000 for the cabrio with a sliding canvas roof. The new coupe’s price is $1,200 less than the outgoing model, but the cabrio’s price is exactly the same. Besides the price, there are some practical improvements for the new Fortwo EV. Read More
Twitter launched a version of its service on Apple TV and other media player platforms last fall in order to deliver its live video content to the big screen. Today, the company is updating its Apple TV app with a couple of new features, including support for Periscope’s Global Map and the ability to watch live 360 degree videos. The company notes that, with this launch, Twitter is… Read More
You can hear the champagne corks popping here in Seattle as Boeing is awarded the contract to make DARPA’s cool experimental spaceplane. The XS-1, as it’s called, would allow for relatively cheap and simple trips to space for launching and testing satellites and all that sort of thing. Read More
International tourism to the U.S. is down, according to Foursquare location data. Using data from 13 million users (who have opted in to always-on location trails), Foursquare can examine who walks in and out of 93 million public places across the globe. According to the firm, the U.S. market share of international tourism started to drop in October 2016, falling by 6 percent year-over-year.… Read More
Imzy, the kinder, gentler online community platform, will be shutting down on June 23rd. Company co-founder Dan McComas made the announcement in a blog post today, stating his apologies and explaining to the community Imzy just couldn’t find its place in the market. Read More
Tech companies, and increasingly even non-tech companies, are struggling with the fact that there are not enough trained data scientists to fill market demand. Every company has their own strategy for hiring and training, but Airbnb has taken things a step further — running its own university-style program, complete with a custom course-numbering system. Read More
Attention, startups. The day you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived! We’re stoked to announce that registration is now open for startups looking to display in Startup Alley or Hardware Alley at Disrupt SF 2017. And to kick off the festivities, we’re launching a special extra early-bird offer. Read More
Rackspace today announced that its board has appointed Joe Eazor as its new CEO, effective June 12. Eazor will replace Rackspace president Jeff Cotten, who stepped in as the company’s interim CEO after former CEO Taylor Rhodes left the company about three weeks ago. At the time, Rhodes said he left Rackspace to become “the CEO of a smaller private company.” That company, we… Read More
If art is a window into the soul, what does art discover when it peers deep into the inner workings of a robot? In this installment of Judah vs. the Machines, actor Judah Friedlander tests his art skills against a robot designed to make visually appealing art in different artistic styles. Read More
Using stickers to decorate your photos is a common feature found in social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others. But today, stickers have started showing up in a more surprising place: Amazon’s mobile app. Following a recent update, Amazon has added support for stickers within its iOS app’s camera feed – the feature that allows you to search for… Read More
Robo-advisor Wealthfront originally came to market with a product to automate retirement savings, but over time has expanded to provide other financial tools. Today, the company is announcing a new product aimed at helping parents save for their children’s college education. Read More
You’re vulnerable to bias and polarization if you only get your news from one source. So instead of highlighting a single news outlet when you click through to a Trending topic, Facebook will now show a carousel of the other most popular articles written about the subject by different publishers. Meanwhile, Facebook is giving more exposure to Trending Topics on mobile. Rather than only… Read More
Serena Williams (yes, THAT Serena Williams) has joined the board of consumer survey startup SurveyMonkey, along with Intuit CEO Brad Smith. This is the tennis superstar’s first venture into Silicon Valley and, according to a SurveyMonkey spokesperson, came about at the suggestion of fellow board member and Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Read More
To help developers and DevOps professionals manage and secure their microservice-based applications, Google, IBM and Lyft today announced Istio, a new open platform that allows you to create a network of deployed services, and which includes tools for load balancing, service-to-service authentication and monitoring. Read More
At today’s media event in NYC, DJI announced its new Spark drone, destined for the entry-level market as an everyday portable solution for capturing aerial footage. To go with your shiny new Spark, DJI is releasing a new iOS control app, dubbed GO 4.
The new app features a new set of four automated flight modes, which allow you or I to pull off advanced flight maneuvers that would… Read More
An impressive new exploit gives hackers the ability to control your desktop through malware spread by fake movie subtitles. The exploit, which essentially dumps the malware onto your desktop and then notifies the attacker, affects users of video players like Popcorn Time and VLC. Checkpoint found that malformed subtitle files can give hackers the ability to embed code into subtitle files… Read More
In the age of social media, you’re only as good as your last like, and today a startup has raised a sizeable round of funding banking that the same maxim applies to software. G2 Crowd — a Chicago-based company that has built a platform for crowdsourcing enterprise software reviews to help others make decisions on what to use and buy — is today announcing that it has… Read More
