Two years after its last major refresh, Samsung is back with the Galaxy Tab S3. A lot has changed in tablet land in the past two years. Sales have slowed considerably, as consumers have stubbornly opted not to upgrade. Manufacturers, meanwhile, are cannibalizing sales from all sides. Samsung’s got a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to reigniting consumer excitement around the space. Read More
LinkedIn — the social network for professionals that’s now a part of Microsoft — has long been working on ways to get its 465 million users to stay on the site longer and use it for more than simply looking for jobs and quick networking exchanges — part of its bigger advertising and audience play — and today comes the latest development on that front. The company… Read More
Two-and-a-half months after Huawei announced that its Mate 9 will be getting Alexa, Amazon’s smart assistant is finally arriving for owners of the handset as an over-the-air update. The announcement seemed to fly in the face of Google’s attempts to bolster the profile of its own helper, Assistant, though when discussing its decision to go with Alexa on its US flagship ahead of… Read More
After acquiring Trello earlier this year, Atlassian is now getting to the point where it is bringing more of its services to Trello’s lightweight project management service. Given that Trello already has a framework for bringing third-party services into its tool, it’s no surprise that Atlassian is also going this route. The company today launched Trello “power-ups”… Read More
Fancy paint jobs for airplanes are nothing novel, but few airlines ever really commit to making their jets look unique like Japan’s ANA. The air carrier’s latest custom craft is one of its Star Wars series of planes, commemorating everyone’s favorite golden protocol droid with a C-3PO yellow fuselage wrap, and interior decorating to match. The C-3PO ANA Jet follows R2-D2… Read More
Boom Supersonic has raised a new $33 million Series A round, which it says is enough to build and fly its first supersonic jet, the XB-1 demonstration and testing craft, which will be a 1/3-scale prototype version of the supersonic airliner it will eventually build and sell to air fleet customers. The final Boom jet aims to be able to make the trip from NYC to London in just three hours and… Read More
Tencent may be more than a decade old but the Chinese internet giant continues to grow at pace after it posted its most significant jump in annual revenue for four years. The firm, best known for China’s dominant messaging app WeChat, announced total revenue of RMB 151.9 billion ($21.9 billion) for its fiscal 2016. That’s up 48 percent year, its biggest leap since 2012, when… Read More
500 Startups’ frontier and emerging markets travel series ― Geeks on a Plane ― kicks off its first Africa tour this week. The 12-day trip will make stops in Nigeria (Lagos), Ghana (Accra), and South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town). “We’ve done about 10 investments in sub-Saharan Africa,” said 500 Startups’ founding partner Dave McClure― such as Nigerian… Read More
iPhone enthusiasts the world over were given a new slab of glass to lust over yesterday after Apple unveiled a red version of the iPhone 7 in its latest move to support HIV/AIDS charity [Red]. The (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition iPhone 7 is the first time that Apple has supported the charity through its flagship phone, — previous (PRODUCT)RED editions have included Beats headphones and… Read More
Berlin will see Disrupt Europe, our major conference, arrive this December, featuring some of the best known names from the Valley and Europe. Ciarán O’Leary of Blue Yard Capital and Christian Nagel of Earlybird Capital will be among those speaking. Ciarán O’Leary joined Earlybird in 2009 as a Senior Associate and was promoted to Partner in January 2012. He later left in 2016 to… Read More
Companies are increasingly investing in workforce development to retrain their employees, but if you’re in your 50’s, it can be intimidating to learn how to code with a bunch of 20-year-olds.
While most tech coverage is focused on the jobs that are going to be destroyed by automation and artificial intelligence, Michael Jay Walker’s story exemplifies how tech can reinvent… Read More
Hardware that responds to voice commands is already out there and probably in your hand or house right now. Whether it’s a smartphone, smart speaker or wearable, it has to connect to the cloud to deliver answers. Now, a startup called Mythic (formerly known as Isocline) is launching a chip and software that will change all that, putting voice control, computer vision and other kinds of… Read More
The UK startup behind a connected kegel exerciser called Elvie is today announcing a $6 million Series A round led by European VC firm Octopus Ventures. Female focused VC AllBright is also joining the round… Read More
Chinese internet giant Baidu is losing the head of its data and artificial intelligence (AI) research division.
Andrew Ng, the company’s chief scientist, announced his departure today three years after he joined Baidu to oversee its foray into deep learning technology. Ng is recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on AI, and he helped… Read More
Uber may have become the latest in a long line of Western tech firms to have failed in China, but fellow gig economy darling Airbnb is determined to succeed in the Middle Kingdom. Today, the company announced a new brand for its China-based business and the local launch of Trips, its travel services feature. Beyond those launches, the firm pledged to increase its local presence via plans to… Read More
Apple creates a new video editing app called Clips, large electronics are now banned from flights to the U.S. coming from 13 countries and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies starts building full-size passenger pods. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Over 15,000 founders from 7,200 startups applied to this batch of Y Combinator. It chose just over 100 with founders from 22 countries to go through its accelerator program. Today, the second half of those companies launched on stage, and we have breakdowns of all 51 of these businesses. Oh, and the ACLU. The 97-year old legal activism non-profit is far from a startup, but went through YC to… Read More
Gas is the biggest cost for airlines. The easiest way to reduce these costs? Don’t use gas at all. That was the pitch from Wright Electric, a startup building an commercial passenger plane that runs on batteries and can handle flights under 300 miles. These short-haul trips make up 30 percent of all flights and a $26 billion market. Today Wright Electric gave its first preview to the… Read More
Uber held a special press call on Tuesday, hosted by board member Arianna Huffington and staffed with three of its highest ranking female staff. The call was pretty clearly an attempt to counter-message some of the negative press Uber has faced, specifically around its culture and accusations of sexism. Read More
You can hack your IKEA furniture to be more awesome. You can hack video games to make your fellow gamers hate your guts. And with the help of Macchina — now on Kickstarter — you can teach your car a few new tricks, too. What could possibly go wrong? Read More
