Wrapify, the startup that will pay you to wrap your car with an advertisement, has raised $3 million in seed funding. As a refresher, the startup provides a two-sided marketplace that matches up drivers wanting to make some extra money with brands looking for a unique way to advertise. Eligible drivers will get their car wrap installed (and removed) for free, and on average are paid $450 a… Read More
Instagram is steadily closing its feature gap with Snapchat. Today, Instagram launched its first geostickers, which let users add and arrange illustrations to their Stories posts related to their locations. The first places getting city-wide and special neighborhood geostickers are New York City and Jakarta, Indonesia. These add to Instagram Stories’ existing location stickers that add… Read More
Kuri, the smart home robot from Bosch internal startup Mayfield Robotics, won a lot of hearts when it debuted at CES in January. Now, the little domestic bot has gained some new abilities, which should help it win minds, too, when it launches officially to pre-order customers later this year. One of Kuri’s new powers is facial detection, which allows it to tailor its reactions and… Read More
As alarm bells sound around the latest document dump from WikiLeaks, misinformation can spread like wildfire. Journalists are just starting to pore over the files, but a number of security researchers and privacy advocates are hoping to quash the misconception that encrypted chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp have been compromised. A now corrected tweet by The New York Times seems to have set… Read More
Amazon announced this afternoon that its annual membership program, Amazon Prime, is now available in Mexico. The service will offer unlimited free shipping on over 20 million items for the price of 449 pesos ($23) for the first year, before rising to the standard price of 899 pesos ($46) the following year. The move comes less than two years after Amazon launched full operations in the… Read More
Bespoke shelves can sell themselves, given enough attention to design detail. That’s the conviction driving Warsaw-based Tylko, which just closed a €3 million (~$3.1 million) Series A round aiming to step up its app-based custom flat-pack furniture business with additional marketing muscle. Read More
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive officer, notified his employees this morning that the company is actively looking for a chief operating officer. This comes following a report from The Information that Kalanick was planning to appoint a second-in-command executive. “This morning I told the Uber team that we’re actively looking for a Chief Operating Officer: a peer who… Read More
Instead of competing with Google Docs, WordPress.com is going to embrace the popular web editor so you can write and publish from Google Docs. It’s going to make it much easier to collaborate with other people, as Google Docs has become the default collaborative real-time editor on the web. More than a quarter of the web runs on WordPress. In other words, millions of people use the… Read More
Sneakers are red-hot right now. And like with everything else, tech has come along for the ride. From resale apps to startups that actually make their own kicks, we’ve seen countless startups stake their claim on every part of the sneaker industry. And now we’re bringing a panel with the hottest names in the industry to Disrupt SF 2017, so you can learn firsthand why the… Read More
GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) and DBL Partners co-led a $40 million investment in Farmer’s Business Network, Inc., the company announced on Tuesday. FBN started as something of a professional network for farmers and other agronomists. It allowed people working in agriculture to anonymously share information about what they were paying for seeds, fertilizers and other… 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 ten 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
Twitter Moments, Twitter’s own take on short-form content told as a series of connected tweets, are today getting their own analytics, the company announced today. This will allow Moments’ creators to track how well their content is working on Twitter, by offering details on opens, likes, shares and more. The idea is that this data will aid in crafting better-performing Moments… Read More
CNN is making a grand entrance into the immersive medium of VR with a new effort called CNNVR. Trump’s favorite news source is launching the VR unit to “transport users to the front row of global events.” The company is launching the VR unit with a feature highlighting the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. CNN has already worked on nearly 50 pieces of 360-degree… Read More
Wikileaks published today notes on what it alleges are a large set of CIA hacking tools. Among the dump was a tool developed by the CIA and MI5 that attempted to turn certain Samsung smart TVs into remote listening and monitoring devices. It’s called Weeping Angel. Because Doctor Who. The exploit only targeted certain Samsung TVs though if this tool exists, there are likely more hacks… Read More
The world of coffee is one often torn between the old and the new, traditional brewing techniques and the latest, coolest method. But if there’s one area pretty much anyone would agree improvements could be made, high tech or otherwise, it’s instant coffee. Sudden Coffee is looking to do just that with good beans, better tech, and a web-based business model. Read More
The Nintendo Switch is great and I can’t stop thinking about Zelda even when I’m not playing it. But some of you may have noticed that the left ‘Joy-Con’ controller has some connection issues. Some reviewers noticed the issue, Nintendo itself has some recommendations. And TechCrunch has also heard that the connection issues go beyond software and will likely involve… Read More
Chinese electronics giant ZTE this week pled guilty to violating US-Iran sanctions. The plea marks the end of a five-year joint investigation by the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. As a result, the company has agreed to an $892,360,064 fine, coupled with an additional $300,000,000 it be forced to pay if it violates terms of the agreement.… Read More
Airbus has been talking about its Vahana flying autonomous vehicle project for a while now, but at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, it’s showing off a concept design created in partnership with Italdesign. The demonstration vehicle offers modular functionality, meaning it an operate both on the ground and in the air, and Airbus thinks it’s one potential answer to the growing… Read More
Pinterest has been ramping up its efforts in visual search to make its search and discovery features more useful, but today it’s opening up the technology a bit more with an integration into the company’s Chrome browser extension. With the updated extension, you’ll be able to hover on any image on the web in order to find related ideas and products – that is, you… Read More
