New York-based smart lock maker Latch, which targets the enterprise market, selling its locks plus a subscription digital entry management service to building owners wanting to offer value-add services to their tenants, is announcing its second product. Read More
Slowly disproving stereotypes, the online VC has established itself as a viable tool for tech finance. But while the model has made money for investors, the industry still faces perceptions of selling money for money’s sake, without much care for the nuanced entrepreneur-investor relationship. FundersClub, one of the earliest and most active online funds, is building out its own… Read More
Kenyan communications hardware company BRCK unveiled its SupaBRCK this week — a waterproof, solar-powered Wi-Fi box that operates as a 3G hotspot and off-grid server. Read More
Nintendo Switch controllers are flexible, if flawed — the latest hardware they work with is the NES Classic, via 8bitdo’s $17 Retro Receiver, and a new firmware update available now for that little dongle. The wireless accessory already lets you connect a range of Bluetooth controllers to your NES Classic, including 8bitdo’s own NES30 controller replica, and PlayStation 4, Wii… Read More
Circle with Disney, a device that helps parents manage their home’s internet rules and restrictions, wants to be more than just a modern-day net nanny. Already, it had differentiated itself from competing software solutions, by offering a licensed selection of Disney content – like games, videos, trailers and more – to make its service more appealing. Today, it’s taking… Read More
With Disrupt looming here in New York, we have a bit of a surprise for you this year. In April, we’ll be holding our first-ever TC Takes Manhattan event, complete with the TC Trivia Throwdown!
Actually, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s four events in one night.
Let me explain.
On April 6, TC will be taking over Manhattan with four separate events occurring… Read More
Google Play is adding its first original podcast series, called “City Soundtracks,” to its music service, Google announced this morning. The series will feature interviews with various musicians about how their hometowns influenced their work, including the people and the moments that had an impact. The podcasts will be hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway – a name that may already… Read More
Remittances — the business of money transfers — is a fragmented and huge market, currently estimated to be worth some $25 trillion annually. Now, one of the more interesting startups in the field — which combines “alternative” financial rails like the blockchain with more traditional bank rails to provide faster and cheaper remittance services for small and… Read More
As humans find themselves forced to mate with our robotic overlords I suspect there will be some dancing. And what better way to teach us how to dance than with motors tucked into our socks? Designer Pascal Ziegler built these wild wearables to teach “dancing pairs choreography.” They’re basically vibrating socks. There is an Instructable here so you can make a pair of your… Read More
Video sharing platform Vimeo is joining competitors Facebook and YouTube by also adding support for 360 degree video. The site, which targets video creators more specifically, is taking the extra step of helping coach people on how to make these sorts of immersive videos through a series of online tutorials. There’s also a new channel on the site, which allows viewers to explore a… Read More
I’m convinced that if humans could find fun in simple games as easily as pets, our world would be a healthier place. Watching footage of dogs playing with Hansen Goh’s Pebby pet toy, launched today, has only persuaded me of this further. The smartphone-controlled mechanized ball keeps pets active and in good spirits, letting owners remotely draw their companions from one room to… Read More
StartX has grown a lot over the years, shifting from a program focused almost exclusively on helping Stanford students become founders to one that now also supports later-stage companies and serial entrepreneurs. As the accelerator looks to take the next step in its evolution, it has brought in alum Joseph Huang as its new CEO. Read More
Endor, a stealth Israeli predictive analytics company, has its roots in some interesting research on human behavior conducted at MIT’s legendary Media Lab. The company has developed a predictive analytics cloud service based on a concept called ‘Social Physics‘, which purports to simplify big data analysis. The thinking is that people tend to behave in predictable ways,… Read More
White House staffers have been drawn to Confide by its security features, which include messages that require a reader to run their finger over the text as they read and destruct after reading. But security researchers say Confide isn’t living up to its encryption guarantee.
Fred Raynal and Jean-Baptiste Bédrune of Quarkslab published a proof-of-concept paper and video today that… Read More
Another legal tech startup coming out of the UK: Cognitiv+ is applying artificial intelligence to automate contract analysis and management, offering businesses a way to automate staying on top of legal risks, obligations and changing regulatory landscapes. Read More
Nearly every time I go to WebMD’s symptom checker it somehow leads to telling me I might have some horrible, cancerous disease. Heading over to Yahoo Answers is usually no different. The last time I typed in Google for “shoulder pain” I got an ad recommending I buy a “LightStim” tool promising to shoot “Multi-wave LED technology” through my body. So… Read More
If you’re thinking of getting a new carry case for your iPad or MacBook, then a project from a company called Markhor may be worth your time. Markhor uses the web to sell designer shoes crafted by local shoe-makers in Pakistan at affordable prices and now it is expanding its focus. Part of YC’s summer batch in 2015, it is piloting the idea of handcrafted covers for MacBooks… Read More
Kabbage, a billion-dollar startup that combines machine learning algorithms, data from public profiles on the internet and other factors to rate and then loan people money for their small businesses, is today announcing another big step up in its ambitions. The company has secured over $500 million in fixed-rate, asset-backed notes, money that it will use to expand the amount, payback… Read More
Nominations are now open for The Europas, the European Tech Startup Awards and one-day conference. The Europas will be held on 13 June 2017, in London at Here East, and are officially part of London Tech Week. TechCrunch is the exclusive media sponsor of the conference and awards. You can nominate an individual (founder, investor etc), startup, accelerator or venture investor which you… Read More
Amazon has quietly made one more acquisition to build out the productivity services on its cloud platform AWS. The company has acquired Do.com, a startup that had built a platform to make meetings more productive by doing things like managing notes in preparation for them, and creating reports for those who were not there, as well as organising the meetings themselves. Amazon is… Read More
