In its continued effort to divide and conquer, About.com is launching yet another standalone media brand in the form of The Spruce, a site dedicated to home improvement and food.
The new site brings over more than 50,000 pieces of content covering home decor/design, food and recipes, gardening, family life, crafts and hobbies, and pets. The idea here is to combine About’s… Read More
Voice-powered artificial intelligence is not something that’s easy to set up for just any business, even if it might have real benefits in terms of driving sales or improving customer experience. Voysis is a startup that wants to change that, with an AI platform that can parse natural language input, and that works effectively in specific domains including ecommerce, entertainment and more. Read More
A GPS error prevented SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship from mating with the ISS early this morning. The craft was less than a mile away from the space station when the docking had to be aborted. NASA stated the Dragon craft and the ISS crew are safe. Another rendezvous will be attempted on Thursday. This is the first time SpaceX had to abort an ISS delivery mission as the company has… Read More
This grand opening has been years in the making. Apple’s new campus now has a name and an opening date. It’ll be called Apple Park and the first employees will move in April 2017.
As 12,000 Apple employees are going to work there, the move isn’t going to be an easy task. It’s going to take roughly six months to have everyone there. While April is the grand opening… Read More
Mailgun, a Y Combinator-incubated email delivery service that was acquired by Rackspace in 2012, today announced that it is being spun out of Rackspace and that it has raised $50 million. Rackspace itself, of course, is going through a transition period now that it has become a private company again and given that email delivery isn’t one of its core services, the company decided to… Read More
Internet of Things startup Toymail, which sells connected plush toys to parents of younger kids who want them to have a playful alternative to a mobile phone, has now launched an app store. Read More
I’m not saying your head is oddly shaped, per se, but if you have trouble finding glasses that fit then a team from Cambridge, Massachusetts has a pair for you. Their Falcon I glasses are designed to fit you perfectly and won’t touch your cheeks, spread over your wider face, or frustrate you by slipping off.
The $229 shades come in a sporty style and are aimed at bikers and runners. Read More
MakieLab, a London-based startup that 3D printed and sold custom dolls, has officially shuttered, with a partial exit to Disney. TechCrunch understands that the U.S. entertainment company acquired MakieLab’s tech and assets as early as July last year, a story that I have tried but failed to nail down ever since. Until now, that is. Read More
500 Startups is rebooting its efforts in Greater China after it hired a new head of business for the region, which covers mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Edith Yeung, a former executive with browser firm Dolphin Mobile, is taking up the reins. The VC firm had been without a recognized setup in China for some time after former lead Rui Ma relocated to the 500’s U.S. operations… Read More
Would you tell Facebook you’re happy to see all the bared flesh it can show you? And that the more gratuitous violence it pumps into your News Feed the better? Read More
Microsoft has retooled Skype, the messaging service synonymous with business users, for people living in emerging markets. Today, at its Future Decoded event in India, Microsoft took the wraps off Skype Lite. The service is an Android app that mains the core video and voice calling functionalities, but is optimized for those on limited internet connections such as 2G data. It… Read More
More new VC money sloshing around Europe. This time it comes courtesy of Berlin-based Project A, which has previously invested in companies such as WorldRemit, Lost My Name, and ZenMate. The German VC firm is announcing the closure of its second fund, totalling €140 million, to be invested in early-stage European technology startups. In addition, Project A is closing in on a separate new… Read More
Baidu is charging up its video content push after iQiyi, its YouTube-style service in China, raised $1.53 billion from the sale of convertible notes to investors. The deal appears to end speculation that the firm was mulling an IPO.
iQiyi, which had an offer to go independent fall through last year, raised the capital from a number of top-name investors including Hillhouse Capital, Boyu… Read More
Verizon is finally buying Yahoo, Jay Z is planning a VC fund, Uber investigates sexual harassment claims, Boeing doubles down on satellites and Skurt offers on-demand rental cars. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Consumer VR has been around for a nearly a year and there are a ton of questions floating around that still boggle even the sharper minds in the industry. One that’s been answered (to some degree), however, is how on earth developers can show consumers what VR is actually like without needing them to experience it in person. Researchers have made pretty quick work of answering… Read More
If you were lucky enough to get your hands on an NES Classic Edition this last holiday season, you were probably impressed (as was I) with the quality of the emulation — so much so you wished it had a few more games, or maybe even that there was an SNES version. Well, your dream is coming true — kind of, anyway. Read More
It looks like Apple has finally picked up one of the last remaining pieces of internet property linked to one of its key service brands: the iPhone and Mac giant has quietly taken over ownership of iCloud.net, TechCrunch has learned. Subsequent to that, the small-time Asian social network that existed at the site has informed its users that it will be shutting down by the end of this… Read More
Android Wear 2.0 was bound to be a disappointment. There was just too much hanging on the second generation of the wearable operating system. After all, a significant chunk of declining smartwatch shipments was laid at the feet of the OS’s ongoing delay and, as last year drew to a close, studies like this report from IDC pointed to a dismal end to the year for a space so many were once… Read More
As the TV show Silicon Valley has shown, the tech community there is ripe for satire. So it’s not surprising that the next “product” to be born into this satirical “vertical” is a board game where you must go through the sometimes tortuous process of raising money. Read More
