Anthony Levandowski took his seat in a conference room one sunny Friday morning in April and proceeded to read the same phrase from a sheet of paper for the next five hours. “On the advice and direction of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer. And I assert the rights guaranteed to me under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Read More
Loog is a New York-based guitar company run by a music teacher named Rafael Atijas. These three-string guitars are designed for kids as young as 3 years old and they make guitar easy and fun – at least according to my kids who played with them when they were much younger.
The new models are called the Mini for ages 3 and older and the Pro for ages 8 and older. The Mini is a smaller… Read More
The UK government has criticized Twitter for restricting police and intelligence agency access to data which it says could be used to identify terrorist plots, according to the Telegraph newspaper. Read More
Space deserves the highest resolution available. Even if all you’re broadcasting is a tabletop inside the International Space Station – it’s a work surface in space, it deserves special attention. That’s why it’s important that Amazon Web Services and NASA are partnering to deliver the first ever 4K video live stream from the International Space Station today, at… Read More
When Nvidia makes investments in AI startups, it’s probably a good idea to sit up and take note: The GPU maker has essentially enabled modern AI in many ways, and so it’s probably seen the gamut of potential applications of its technology over the years, and should know better than most what’s likely to work out and what isn’t. Six new companies have garnered not… Read More
DJI just emailed invitations to the media for a launch event in May. It’s likely this is the event where the drone company will launch the little Spark.
Smaller than the DJI Mavic Pro, the Spark looks to take DJI to a lower price point for a new drone. Leaks and early looks revealed the small drone has fixed prop arms, a two axle gimbal yet still packs collision detection and similar… Read More
Google last fall introduced its own travel planning application, Google Trips, a competitor to TripIt and others, which combines tools to manage your air and hotel reservations with suggestions of places to visit and things to do at your destination. Today, Google Trips is getting its first big update since its fall debut, with the addition of a handful of new features aimed at helping… Read More
There are two billion unbanked people in the world today. Unfortunately the banking industry isn’t very interested in these people, so they are forced to use cash. But even though 4.5 billion people have cell phones, including many of the unbanked, the distribution of access to cash via a mobile is at 1%, more or less. As you can see, there’s a problem to be solved here. Yes… Read More
If you’re new to daily fantasy sports, playing (and winning) can be daunting — especially when you’re playing stat-heavy sports like baseball. To try to fix this FanDuel is launching a new product called FanDuel Mixup, which aims to make daily fantasy sports more appealing to casual users. First announced in March, Mixup is now available for players starting today. Read More
The Google Home and Amazon Echo are pretty useful devices to have in the kitchen, where clean hands are often at a premium. Until now, though, when you asked Google Home for a recipe, it would happily tell you all about it — but unless you are the president of the U.S. and have the world’s greatest memory, you probably forgot more than half of the ingredients by the time it… Read More
The competitive landscape for transportation apps has become a little smaller today. Gett has announced that it has acquired Juno, a rival in the New York market. Separately, Gett’s CEO and founder Dave Waiser has told TechCrunch in an interview that the price of the deal was $200 million, although the companies are not disclosing other terms such as whether the deal was in cash,… Read More
Spotify has acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain Labs, whose team will join the company’s office in New York where they will work on developing better technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks hosted on Spotify’s service. Prior to its acquisition, the startup had developed several technologies that could aid in these… Read More
With the addition of a camera, Amazon’s new Echo Look device can now see and hear all. The device is a sort of standalone selfie machine so users can take full-length photos and videos of themselves specifically for the sake of checking their fashion choices in the morning.
The new home assistant answers to commands like “Alexa, take a picture” and “Alexa, take a… Read More
Chris Sacca, a former Google lawyer who rose to fame by betting heavily on Twitter and Uber, says he’s “hanging up his spurs,” and getting out of the investing game. In a new post, Sacca explains that he achieved what he set out to do when he created his venture firm, Lowercase Capital, in 2009, an outfit that was helped along by early checks from Industry Ventures, Yahoo… Read More
Is Twitter the new TV? The social network hopes to become something resembling that, with plans revealed by CFO and COO Anthony Noto to eventually be airing live video content 24 hours a day, 7 days per week via both its website and app. Noto discussed the plans with BuzzFeed News, ahead of the company’s earnings report Wednesday morning. Twitter already plays host to a number of live… Read More
Genetic engineering startup Synthego makes synthetic ribonucleic acid (RNA), an important genetic component found in all living cells and also used in CRISPR Cas9, a technology enabling scientists to rip out unwanted genetic code with scissor-like precision. The company was founded four years ago by brothers Paul and Michael Dabrowski. Read More
Digital ad revenue grew to $72.5 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from the year before. That’s according to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (a trade group for online publishers and advertisers). The report also says that for the first time, mobile ads accounted for more than half of that spending —… Read More
Before its adorable little robot Cozmo arrived on the scene, Anki was in the business of making smart toy cars. The hardware startup’s robotic race car line Overdrive is getting a pretty high profile promotional boost in the form one of the most profitable franchises in film history. In September, the company will be launching Anki Overdrive: Fast & Furious Edition, a racing kit… Read More
As industries go, agriculture represents one of the worst environmental offenders, according to research by the United Nations Environment Programme. Farms need tending around the clock. So besides all the fertilizers, pesticides and water they use, farms also burn a lot of fossil fuels and money to keep the lights on, tractors rolling and refrigerators humming. Now one major agricultural… Read More
There is nothing better than giving someone the perfect gift. So it’s only natural that giving the wrong gift, for which you searched tirelessly and still came up short, is one of the worst feelings in the world. That’s where Token comes in. The startup, launching publicly today from the Human Ventures startup studio, wants to take on the challenge of gift-giving with a little… Read More
