Exiled Turkish businessman Hakan Uzan could have picked up around 10,000 averaged-priced Vertu handsets for the amount he reportedly just paid for the company. Though it’s tough to say, really, which would have been the worse investment. Read More
Several new iPad models have been spotted being tested in Cupertino and nearby locations — potentially confirming earlier rumors of a planned iPad refresh arriving this spring. Read More
The stakes are high as Facebook gambles its messaging user base on a bet to beat Snapchat at its own game. Some are downright pissed that Facebook would “ruin” Messenger by forcing messy social media into a clean chat app for a chance at glory and riches. Yet there’s an even bigger audience of Stories newbies available to be seduced by a convenient feature where they… Read More
After months spent watching other anonymous messaging and sharing apps come and go, Whisper is coming back to the market with a new product, a massive readership and a reinvigorated approach to sharing its content. Read More
Boston-based VentureApp wants to make business messaging easier, by becoming the online and mobile chat hub for its users’ professional contacts and business needs. To do so, the company has raised $4 million in funding led by Accomplice, with investment from Fullstack Ventures, Boston Seed Capital and a whole slew of angels. Read More
The slow progression of the sale of Yahoo to Verizon — first announced in July 2016 but delayed in part because of massive data breach disclosures — took one more step forward today. Yahoo has filed a lengthy 8-K update with the SEC with many details about the future management of Altaba — the investment holding company left behind after the sale containing its Alibaba… Read More
Kate Aronowitz was the vice president of design at Wealthfront. Before that, she was a designer director at Facebook, where she built their team from 20 to 200 world-class designers under Mark Zuckerberg. Read More
Looking to turn watching YouTube videos into a more social experience, a team from Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, has launched Uptime, an app that lets you watch videos together with your friends. Read More
In preparation for Disrupt New York in May I’m going to hold a few pitching workshops in New York for you all. We’ll listen to and critique 8 pitches on March 13th at 7pm at the Knotel space at 22 West 38th Street, 4th Floor. This is an informal pitch-off, but the two best teams will get two tickets to Disrupt New York and the undying admiration of millions of people (actually… Read More
Pandora’s long-awaited alternative to Spotify has arrived today. The company this morning announced the debut of a new paid tier to its streaming service called Pandora Premium, which offers a combination of radio-like listening as well as the option to search and play any track and create your own playlists. Read More
In what amounts to an innocuous but important proof-of-concept, a hacker called qwertyoruiopz has released a pseduo-jailbreak that allows you to run arbitrary code on the Nintendo Switch. The interesting thing? Because of a bug in the browser software used on the Switch, the same jailbreak that let iOS 9 users modify their phones has been repurposed to attack the console. The jailbreak code… Read More
Pitching a “codeless” user interface that allows anyone in a business to develop applications for business intelligence, Skuid has raised $25 million in new financing. Read More
In response to pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change and the Center for Media Justice, Facebook announced today that it will clarify its developer policy to explicitly prohibit the use of Facebook or Instagram data in surveillance tools. Read More
Uber alternative Hailo, which lets people hail a licensed taxi via smartphone app, is coming to the end of the road in London, as users are now being urged to switch to new ride-hailing vehicle, mytaxi. Read More
Everyone is cloning Snapchat right now, but messaging app Viber has gone back to the old school by copying Snapchat’s core ephemeral messaging feature. Read More
First they partnered, and now comes the acquisition: The computing giant Intel has confirmed that it is acquiring Mobileye, a leader in computer vision for autonomous driving technology, for $15.3 billion — the biggest-ever acquisition of an Israeli tech company. Read More
Engie, the Israeli startup that offers a car diagnostics device and app to enable you to better understand the health of your car, tied to a marketplace for local mechanics, sees its full U.K. launch today. Read More
The last 12 months have seemed an annus horribilis in the cryptocurrency world. The Bitcoin community is still fighting its years-old esoteric-to-an-outsider civil war, and is still nowhere near consensus; Ethereum’s public image has not recovered from the DAO fiasco; the much-hyped R3 consortium has abandoned blockchain technology; and the SEC rejected the touted Bitcoin ETF. Read More
With hate crimes reportedly on the rise across the country and online, the Anti-Defamation League is setting up a new outpost in Silicon Valley, backed by the Omidyar Network, to look at ways to use technology to fight back. Read More
After spending a few days in Austin, which lost Uber and Lyft almost a year ago, I started brainstorming a post about how the city was doing just fine without either of the ridesharing giants. Until they weren’t. Read More
