This weekend, Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese will attempt to run a marathon in under two hours. It’s a bold – and some say impossible – goal, and a hell of a marketing campaign for Nike, which has been dumping time, money and resources into Saturday’s event for a few years now. The Breaking2 race (not to be confused with the mid-80s breakdancing sequel… Read More
If the Surface Laptop wasn’t enough, Microsoft is going to announce new devices once again at an event later this month. The company’s vice president of devices Panos Panay teased the event in a tweet and Instagram photo. Besides the city and date, the only hint we have is the use of the hashtag “#Surface.” Given that the Surface Laptop is brand new, the Surface Studio… Read More
According to a report from Recode this morning, Apple and Amazon may have come to an agreement that will finally bring the Amazon Video app to Apple TV. The app is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2017, and would offer Amazon subscribers an easier way to watch content on Apple TV instead of having to use AirPlay. Amazon and Apple have been at odds for years, as both want… Read More
The conventional thinking about profiling online users is that Facebook (in particular) has enormous amounts of profile data about your tastes, while Amazon has equivalent quantities of data about your shopping habits. While both are true to some extent, the reality is that your liking of cat videos and flirt-Liking work colleagues’ posts doesn’t amount to a heck of a lot, while… Read More
Alongside the rollout of its TV app last year, Apple introduced support for single sign-on in iOS and Apple TV, which allows you to enter TV provider’s credentials just once in the Settings so that you can watch streaming TV across a number of authenticated TV apps without having to configure each one with your credentials. Now, it appears that Amazon is working on a similar feature… Read More
Whether you’re an unsung mathematical genius with a penchant for writing complex equations all over everything or a damn vandal, you’ll find the WriteyDesk quite useful. This test is essentially a big whiteboard that upon which you can write, draw, or sketch and it’s erasable. It comes in white or “birch” and is $300 on Kickstarter ($400 when it hits… Read More
Welcome back to another episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast that works to put the ‘fun’ in ‘venture capital.’ This week from our SoMa studio, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Sequoia’s Roelof Botha. Sequoia, as you might know, was an early backer of companies like Google and Apple. Celebrating the continuing… Read More
Fender’s second app, Tone, is far more ambitious than its predecessor. In fact, it’s the first smartphone app I can recall that’s launched alongside a trio of amplifiers. It’s not necessary to operate them, of course, but it’s certainly a big part of their appeal, opening up access to a seemingly infinite range of guitar tones in the way only a smartphone can. The… Read More
Amazon is expanding its R&D facilities in Cambridge, UK, with a plan to move into a new 60,000sq ft site in the city with capacity for more than 400 staff. Read More
It looks like there’s more trouble round the corner for Uber. Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the company’s controversial “greyball program” which helped it sidestep law enforcement officials and regulators. The existence of the program was made public in early March following an explosive report from The… Read More
Go-Jek raises $1.2 billion, Soylent raises $50 million, wheelchairs get a makeover from Izzy Wheels and Uber attempts to make UberPOOL a little less like a game of Russian roulette. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
YouTube wrapped up tonight’s BrandCast event for advertisers by announcing seven new shows. Some of them come from YouTube stars. The other shows feature stars from beyond YouTube. Read More
Entrepreneurs don’t pour all their energy into building startups just to have a patent troll attack them with patents of questionable quality. The patent troll problem is big and growing, posing a threat to startups and established companies alike, costing companies millions in defensive litigation fees and diverting money that would be better spent on innovation. Read More
Facebook gets a lot of flack for just reinforcing your world views in its News Feed echo chamber instead of challenging your opinions. That’s because you choose exactly which friends and Pages to follow. But Facebook’s newest feature could bring a wider range of sources to your News Feeds. Read More
Earlier this week, Docker made the surprise announcement that its long-time CEO Ben Golub was stepping down and that former Concur CEO Steve Singh was stepping into his shoes. While this move surely came as a surprise to many, it was actually in the making for a while. Read More
Virtual reality may be in desperate need of some content, but Facebook’s Oculus will now be focusing its efforts on investing in rather than creating virtual reality. Oculus VP of Content Jason Rubin announced today that the company will shut down its award-winning cinematic VR division, Oculus Story Studio. Read More
Singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe is using technology to try to recapture some of music’s old-school magic and physicality. For the launch of her new album, Raw Space, Wolfe teamed up with Nokia Bell Labs and Design IO. Starting May 5, Bell Labs will be streaming 360-degree footage from its anechoic chamber — a room with no echoes, where a vinyl version of Raw Space will be playing. Read More
Alright Bay Area tech fans, the day you’ve been waiting for is here. Registration for Disrupt SF 2017 is now open, and with it comes your opportunity to score tickets to the best startup show in San Francisco for a fraction of the price with an extra early-bird ticket. Read More
Hardly anyone was pleased by the rollback of the broadband privacy rule last month, opening up the possibility of ISPs collecting and selling your browsing data — including, as it turns out, cities whose citizens were left out in the cold. Seattle wasted no time taking matters into their own hands, and the result is a local rule that provides a few of the repealed one’s critical… Read More
A report by MoffettNathanson found that the pay cable industry lost 762,000 subscribers in Q1 2017, the worst drop ever. To compare last year’s Q1 saw a mere 141,000 subscribers lost.
Analyst Craig Moffett said that the “Pay TV subscriber universe [shrank] at its worst ever annual rate of decline (-2.4%)” and there have been 6.5 million cord-cutter (and the new… Read More
