Comcast NBCUniversal is getting into the startup accelerator game with a program called LIFT Labs for Entrepreneurs. The plan is to launch the first LIFT (“Leveraging Innovation For Tomorrow”) Labs location in early 2018, in Philadelphia’s Comcast Technology Center, with an Atlanta location also opening next year. In addition to the accelerator (which will be run in… Read More
Jay Z’s new venture capital firm Arrive, has arrived – the rap and business mogul has been planning the launch for awhile, according to reports that surfaced in February, but a press release from parent company Roc Nation made it official on Monday. The investment platform will work with early-stage startups, and offer investment of capital as well as assistance with business… Read More
Nintendo’s Switch feels almost like a minimum viable product when it comes to software – the menu, when you boot the console initially, looks like a placeholder with big, empty square blocks suggesting some future software arrival. This is where games you download or insert via cartridge would show up, but it feels very work-in-progress. Jump to the store and the situation’s… Read More
AppOnboard is betting that the best ad for a mobile game is the game itself. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Zweig (who was previously CEO at AdColony, which was acquired by Opera) said that this addresses a big need for game developers, namely the fact that they spend lots of money promoting their apps, only to find that users give up during the initial tutorial. AppOnboard’s solution is… Read More
Putting your startup on display in the Startup Alley at Disrupt is one of the best ways to get your company in front of thousands of tech enthusiasts and industry leaders. The only thing better is getting to do it for free.
We’re giving several startups out there a chance to display in one of our featured pavilions at Disrupt NY 2017 for free, but the deadline to enter is fast approaching. Read More
In a new video from MIT’s CSAIL department, a smirking industrial robot from Rethink picks up spray paint cans and spools of wire, dropping them in the properly labeled bin. The robot hesitates briefly, before accidentally making the wrong choice, only to self-correct and drop the can of paint where it belongs. The correction comes courtesy of an observer in an EEG cap, who… Read More
Amazon’s connected speakers and other Alexa-powered devices now work with Office 365 calendars, Amazon announced this morning. The addition is one of several in recent weeks that sees Alexa becoming a device that can help you with work, instead of just music, entertainment and controlling your smart home.
Alexa earlier this month added support for Outlook Calendar, which also… Read More
Like its tool for Gmail, the organizational Slack integration is designed to be a workflow helper and task management tool. Using it, channel leads can assign tasks, manage team priorities, and selectively post notifications for status updates. Read More
In its ongoing mission to make learning great again, Kahoot! today hit a number of stats few companies can brag about: The company celebrates 40 million monthly active users and a total of 1 billion players moving through its platform over the past four years. Read More
Fitbit’s big smartwatch announcement is, it seems, still a ways off. But the company’s got a pair of announcements this week, including an update to its popular Alta tracker and changes to the way it gathers sleep tracking. The Alta HR is an update to last year’s Alta, a well designed piece of hardware that has since grown into the second-best fitness tracker (behind… Read More
Okta, the $1.2 billion identity management startup for enterprises that some tip for an IPO this year, has made an acquisition of sorts to expand one of its newer lines of business: managing IDs across APIs and apps. Today the San Francisco-based company announced that it has picked up the team from Stormpath, an early mover in providing a way for developers to implement authentication… Read More
The Nintendo Switch’s Bluetooth controllers work with a range of different platforms, it turns out – making for some of the most flexible console controllers currently available. The Xbox One and PlayStation DualShock 4 controllers can also connect to a range of devices using Bluetooth, but the Joy-Cons seem to be ready to use with Macs out of the box with no additional software,… Read More
If you’re into social media and fashion, you may be familiar with LIKEtoKNOW.it. Launched in 2011, the social shopping service lets influencers on blogs and social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat get paid for their work. Over the last year the company claims to have driven $1 billion dollars in sales for retail and brand partners from over 12,000 influencers. While… Read More
The battle for supremacy in India’s e-commerce space looks set to become a slug out between two gigantic global players: Amazon and Alibaba. At stake is one of the world’s fastest growing internet markets. India’s online population is tipped to reach 450 million-465 million people by June 2017, according to a new report co-authored by the Internet and Mobile Association… Read More
Y Combinator is Improving upon its Fall 2014 Stanford course, How to Start a Startup, with a larger scale online course called Startup School. Whether you swear by startup bibles like Both Sides of the Table or Zero to One, there’s no denying that Y Combinator, now having backed over 1400 startups, has a tip or two to share about starting… Read More
HomeTouch, the U.K. home care marketplace, is announcing its nation-wide launch today, along with revealing that it now counts 500 Startups as a backer. Read More
IBM announced today that it was updating its Quantum Experience cloud with a new API that it hopes will increase the abilities of researchers and other interested parties to build more sophisticated applications with its experimental quantum computing system.
Last May, IBM opened up its 5 qubit computer in its NY state labs to the public in the form of a cloud service. The hope was that by… Read More
The spoiler on a future Ford car you buy might be 3D-printed. Ford Motor Company announced on Monday that they’ve begun testing 3D printing of large-scale parts, using tech provided by 3D printing industry giant Stratasys. The pilot project is designed to find out how Ford might be able to use 3D printing to make large parts, tooling and components at relatively small volumes, where… Read More
Following Betsy DeVos’ confirmation as Secretary of Education, the American education system could drastically pivot in unexpected ways. It’s difficult to know exactly how. What we do know is that the declining state of education, and historical opposition DeVos has already faced for her views on its privatization, will lead to the development of new technological advancements. Read More
As over 108,000 attendees from 208 countries filed into the echoing halls of Mobile World Congress last week, I was reminded of the old First World War chant, sung by the soldiers on the front lines in a tone of heavy irony: “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here!” Every year, Mobile World Congress positions itself as the world’s meeting… Read More
