Corporate identities! We love ’em. But boy is it hard to come up with good ones. Sounds like we decided to go with “Oath: A Verizon Company.” We already have a post, but I just did a focus group with myself and this is what I discovered. Read More
It’s official: the president has signed a resolution reversing rules passed last year that would have, among other things, provided strong protections against internet providers collecting and selling your browsing history. Read More
A few years back, Adobe and Google teamed up to launch a new open-source font for Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) languages. Today, the two companies are expanding on this project with the launch of a serif CJK font. Adobe calls this new font Source Han Serif, while Google calls it Noto Serif CJK. Read More
When we first wrote about Chowbotics, their salad-making robot stirred a bit of controversy. The company promises to bring nutritious dining options to offices that don’t have a big cafeteria and budget to employ full-time chefs. But their robot, Sally, threatens to put a number of people out of work. Chowbotics Executive Chairman Rich Page gives us his thoughts. Read More
Verizon’s long-promised Yahoo acquisition has a name. And it, for some reason, is Oath. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong acknowledged the strange new branding on Twitter earlier today after word leaked out that the four-letter word was set to become the love child of the forthcoming AOL-Yahoo merger. Read More
You may be familiar with FCC Chairman Pai as the Trump-appointed monster working to dismantle your internet freedom and security, but that’s not really how it is. Pai is certainly on the unpopular side of the net neutrality debate, but in the matter of connecting underserved communities to the internet, he is sincere, as a couple of recent items on the FCC docket show. Read More
Google X’s raison d’être is embracing far-out ideas, so it’s no surprise, really that former director Mike Cassidy is wading into the decidedly choppy and always controversial waters of nuclear energy. Read More
Newly-released documents from Google’s October arbitration against Anthony Levandowski, one of the leads of its self-driving car project who abruptly left to launch his own startup Otto in January last year, allege that the talented engineer worked on competing projects for years before leaving Google. Google also brought arbitration against another Otto co-founder who, like Levandowski,… Read More
Entrepreneur-investor Kevin Rose is relinquishing his role as CEO of Hodinkee, a New York-based site for wristwatch enthusiasts, and moving back to California. According to a newly published Medium post, Rose will work as a venture partner at the early-stage venture firm True Ventures. Read More
Ryan Holiday made his bones as a PR guy and then revolted against the industry in his tell-all book Trust Me, I’m Lying and then, after much soul-searching, came to embrace the ancient philosophy of stoicism. His latest work, including Ego Is The Enemy, are handbooks for the modern startup stoic. This week I talked to Holiday about his books and how stoicism can help us all calm down… Read More
Iyzico, the Turkish fintech startup to let e-commerce sites and other apps easily accept online payments, has closed $15 million in a Series C round, $12 million of which was announced earlier this year. Read More
There seems to be a trend bubbling up for better tech to test a guy’s sperm in the privacy of his own home. A Harvard-designed sperm motility app made headlines last week with a cheap, at-home test, and now YO, a “sperm selfie” app and FDA-approved device, has just started shipping. Read More
Google announced late last year that it would shut down Map Maker, its older, online tool that allowed anyone to contribute updates to Google Maps. The service, which had been around since 2008, let users correct or fill in missing map content – like place details, roads, business information and more. This was especially useful in helping establish maps in emerging markets, where… Read More
Google is launching a new certification program for mobile site developers today. The exam covers everything from the basics of why mobile sites matter to how to improve mobile site speed, effective mobile UX design and more advanced topics like progressive web apps. As Google notes, passing the exam is meant to show that you have “a demonstrated ability to build and optimize… Read More
In preparation for Disrupt New York and our upcoming TC Sessions series on Robotics Matt Burns and I will be heading to Pittsburgh to talk to some startups. We have some good news! We’ve found a space. We will meet at the Shop on April 11 at 7pm, a new place near bakery square. Please RSVP ASAP. We also need lots and lots of startups, preferably in hardware. Startups will have two minutes… Read More
Netflix added support for offline viewing on iOS and Android late last year, and today it’s bringing the same feature to Windows 10, with the exception of Windows 10 mobile devices. Arriving now in the updated Windows 10 application, a subset of the Netflix catalog can be downloaded to your PC or tablet computer in order to be viewed when a network connection is not available. Read More
Founders Factory, the corporate accelerator vehicle set up by Brent Hoberman’s Founder’s Forum umbrella, has today announced the first two startups selected for their AI accelerator programme in conjunction with CSC Group. The idea is to co-create two new AI businesses within the incubator programme every year, for five years. Terms were not disclosed. CSC Group invested in… Read More
TechCrunch Sessions: Justice is going down on June 6 at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco and we have a jam-packed agenda featuring some of the best and brightest people working on diversity, inclusion and equity in tech, criminal justice reform and social justice. Read More
The Twitterverse is still reeling from Twitter’s revamp of @ replies, and scratching its head over how changing a default avatar has anything to do with addressing abuse, but the network is plodding on, today releasing a new feature aimed at its business users. Read More
Autonomous driving might seem like the province of startups and Silicon Valley, but a new independent research report from Navigant shows automaker Ford at the head of the pack when it comes to self-driving tech. The annual survey looked at 18 different companies, smeared across 10 different criteria, ranging from strategy, to core tech development, to manufacturing capability and staying… Read More
