If you tried to apply to Disrupt NY’s Startup Battlefield today, you might have noticed you hit a wall. We’re having some technical difficulties right now with the website, and have decided to extend the deadline to Thursday, March 2, at 12 pm PT. We’ll be sure to spread the word when the issue is resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience. Startup Battlefield is the… Read More
Social networks may be the most valuable and durable types of businesses powered by “network effects,” the phenomenon of products or services becoming more powerful the more people use them. This is one reason the imminent IPO of social/mobile app Snap, which thrives on network effects, is being so closely watched. Another is that Snap represents the first credible threat to Facebook. Read More
We talked with Kevin Chou, co-founder and CEO of the gaming company Kabam, about his own both stressful and euphoric experience in running a gaming startup for roughly a decade before selling most of its assets in December to South Korea’s Netmarble Games for a reported $700 million. Read More
Dyson will open a second campus focused on research and development in the U.K., close to its Malmesbury tech HQ in nearby Cotswolds. The planned expansion at home follows the recent announcement of a new Singapore tech center, which opened officially earlier this month. Read More
Amazon’s S3 web-based storage service is experiencing widespread issues, leading to service that’s either partially or fully broken on websites, apps and devices upon which it relies. The AWS offering provides hosting for images for a lot of sites, and also hosts entire websites, and app backends including Nest.
The S3 outage is due to “high error rates with S3 in… Read More
Disrupt NY is fast approaching, and the agenda is shaping up to be a real doozy. Alongside speakers like Handy’s Oisin Hanrahan, Managed By Q’s Dan Teran, WayUp’s Liz Wessel, Ford’s Raj Nair and AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, we’re also pleased to host Glossier’s Emily Weiss and Outdoor Voices’ Tyler Haney on the Disrupt NY stage. Read More
The new Volvo XC60 does more on behalf of the driver in order to prevent accidents, moving the SUV further along the continuum toward full autonomy. The new model of the car adds automated steering in tandem with automatic braking to avoid collisions, as well as a few other tricks that involve software taking the wheel when it believes it’s necessary. Read More
It became clear in last year’s mid-year diversity report that Intel had a leaky bucket, meaning that even though it had increased the number of underrepresented minorities it was bringing in, its overall minority representation was on the decline. Based on Intel’s latest diversity report, it seems the company is moving in the right direction when it comes to retention of diverse… Read More
Google Keep, a competitor to note-taking apps like Evernote and Microsoft’s OneNote, is today being integrated into Google’s suite of applications aimed at businesses, G Suite (previously, Google Apps for Your Domain). This allows Keep to become a part of users’ workflow for capturing ideas, jotting down quick reminders or to-dos, creating checklists, taking meeting notes… Read More
Like CES, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona also now attracts its fair share of car makers. Ford was an early adopter a few years ago, and now others are joining the fray, too. I sat down with Dieter May, BMW’s senior vice president of Digital Services and Business Models (in an i3, of course). Read More
There is plenty of enterprise software for the white-collar workforce, but there still isn’t an ideal way to communicate with employees who aren’t sitting at a desk. That’s the thesis behind WorkJam, which is announcing $12 million in funding from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Founder Collective and NovelTMT. Read More
In a small meeting with journalists at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Google’s senior vice president for hardware Rick Osterloh dropped a little bit of news: It looks like the Pixel laptop — Google’s premium Chromebook and the original product bearing the Pixel name — has hit the end of the line after just two iterations. Read More
NASA released a statement in support of SpaceX following that company’s surprise announcement that it will be sending two people around the moon sometime next year. The comment actually says a lot despite not saying very much, and could be a sign that the growing private interest in space will help propel renewed and expanded achievement from the public sector, too. Read More
Google is making a significant change to how its app store, Google Play, will work in terms of making the best games more easily discoverable by end users. At the Game Developers Conference, the company announced that it recently tuned its app store algorithms to take into account user engagement, and not just downloads, in order to better reward quality titles. Read More
Data visualization has been done — there are publicly traded, interactive, real-time and, heck, even artificially intelligent companies promising data visualization. But despite all the noise, Portland-based Reflect is making a go of it in the space, opening up its public beta today. By putting developers first and letting them integrate and customize visualizations in their own… Read More
Automated savings startup Digit has long helped users squirrel away money for a rainy day. But today the company is rolling out a new feature that will make it easier to help its users save and pay their monthly bills. Read More
Ford’s new “Autolivery” van concept has a terrible name, but is actually based on interesting core ideas. The van is yet another result of Ford’s fruitful “last mile mobility” internal employee challenge, and this one pairs an electric self-driving van with autonomous drones that nest within to help transport packages that last few feet to a… Read More
Nissan is testing its self-driving vehicles on European streets for the first time, with a rollout begun Monday in London. The tests, reported by Reuters, involved modified Nissan Leaf electric vehicles equipped with a range of sensors and onboard computing power, going as fast as 50 miles per-hour, and transitioning between small local roads and larger, multi-lane thoroughfares.
London was… Read More
In what is clearly a marketing ploy from workspace rental service Breather, the company is launching a Chrome plug-in called the “Nope Button.”
The idea here, according to the company, is to help people avoid distractions in the office, even if they can’t reserve a private Breather to get some alone time. With open work spaces becoming the standard in startup offices (and… Read More
Snapchat has a reputation for being an app that’s confusing to the “olds” – something the company tried to address with a redesign just ahead of filing for its IPO. In addition, the app has expanded beyond its original use case, which focused on communication, and now includes short, easily digestible content from a number of sources, including media and… Read More
