Pinterest said today it’s launching three new products today that will point out specific elements in pictures — whether viewed live through a camera or through a typical image search — and use them as a jumping point for search. All of these are designed to keep Pinterest coming back over and over to discover ideas based on images. Pinterest has been increasingly trying… Read More
Very little productivity seems to be taking place in VR on the consumer side right now, and to keep that trend alive, Hulu is updating its VR app to ensure that you can watch Seinfeld alongside your virtual reality friends with no friction whatsoever. Today, Hulu is updating its Gear VR and Rift apps to support Oculus’ latest social features. On Gear VR, users will soon be able to check… Read More
Beginning with 2013’s Snowden leaks, the Obama administration publicly wrestled with various thorny issues at the intersection of technology and government surveillance. When, how, and for what purposes should the government collect personal communications and other data? Is it ever appropriate for the government to exploit software flaws for intelligence gathering or crimefighting,… Read More
Google is officially launching Android Wear 2.0 today — the biggest update to the company’s wearable operating system since its launch in 2014. If you’re not a Wear aficionado who has been patiently waiting for this release, you probably remember Wear 2.0 from its Google I/O announcement last May. Even though in day-to-day use, the updated version feels very much like the… Read More
The next time you go to your favorite restaurant or cocktail bar, talk with the manager about bookkeeping. Chances are that they’ll tell you that they waste a ton of time collecting and recording various documents. German startup Zeitgold wants to automate this pesky process so that you can spend more time on your actual business. The startup was founded by two of the co-founders… Read More
After months of waiting, Android Wear 2.0 is finally upon us. And it’s arrived with two ambassadors in tow – both designed by LG. The Watch Style and Sport are two sides of the same coin, separated my $100, a handful of key features and a significant chunk of wrist real estate. The Style is the more subtle of the two options, a slim and (as the name implies) nice looking… Read More
Box decided early on it wanted to be a platform on top of which which developers can build applications using Box services. Today, it introduced several new tools designed to make it easier for developers to get up and running on the Box platform.
Today’s announcement starts with a newly designed Box Developer Console. This is the place developers typically grab their API keys and get… Read More
LG’s two new smartwatches might be the centerpiece of today’s Android Wear 2.0 launch, but Google’s making sure to spread the love, bringing its long-awaited wearable OS update to a whole slew of existing devices. The software giant isn’t offering much in the way of specifics as far as timing – perhaps not all that much of a surprise, given how long it took to get… Read More
Android Wear watches are an interesting breed. Because Google mostly locks the operating system down, there are only so many ways the hardware manufacturers can differentiate themselves from the pack. With the launch of Android Wear 2.0 today, Google is giving its partners the option to add usable hardware buttons and dials to their watches. Its launch partner for Wear 2.0 is LG, which… Read More
As Airbnb, Uber and Snap gear up for potential, and actual, IPOs, public investors are asking a key question: Can these former startups build more than one breakout product? What will determine whether Uber, Airbnb and Snap truly become long-term franchises versus single-product companies? The answer lies in how they handle certain key operational challenges as they scale. Read More
The smartwatch landscape is dramatically different from the one that greeted the first batch of Android Wear devices in the summer of 2014. It’s a lot harder to be bullish about the whole thing these days. Shipments are down, declining 51.6 percent in Q3 of last year, by IDC’s count, while some big names have seemingly abandoned the space altogether, including, notably, Pebble,… Read More
Subscription-based toy company Pley.com entered the Disney accelerator last year with a toy rental business that would ship out toys like Lego, American Girl or Hot Wheels, which could be played with, then kept or returned, starting at $12 per month. Now that the company has exited the program, it’s debuting a twist on its earlier model. Pley has just launched a Disney Princess… Read More
Netflix has decided that I was wrong to think The OA ended exactly as it should’ve after its first series, and has renewed the show for a second season. We don’t know much more than that at this stage, beyond the fact that it refers to the follow-up installment as “Part II” and that it’s not yet confirmed for any specific release window.
Something always survives. Read More
Signal, the encrypted chat application praised by Edward Snowden, is looking to move beyond messaging and into video. A new beta version of the app, now in testing, has enabled “next generation voice and video calling” features, according to the app’s changelog. Beta users are able to try the new features with others who also have the setting enabled. The changes were… Read More
Hayo’s pitch video is much better this time out. The New York-based startup had a bit of a misfire last time with a goofy and confusing promo tied to the announcement of an otherwise fairly compelling connected home product. As it readies it Indiegogo campaign, the company is doing so in much more straightforward fashion with a quick promo clip that involves bringing outsiders into… Read More
500 Startups’ last class will be presenting next week, which means the firm is already underway getting another new class up and running.
The majority of the startups in the 20th batch consist of digital health, financial technology and companies that supply technology and address inefficiency within the government. It’s, naturally, particularly timely. More than a third of the… Read More
Facebook gave Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren a voice late last night when her Senate colleagues attempted to silence her on the floor. As Democrats rally against many of Trump’s cabinet nominations, an arcane rule was whipped out of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pocket, silencing Sen. Warren’s argument against the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.… Read More
Trident Capital Cybersecurity has raised $300 million to invest in new technology companies tackling security threats around the internet of things, payment technologies, identity management, privacy and data management. The new fund, launched by the longtime mid-to-late-stage investment firm Trident Capital, shows how much investors are willing to spend to secure the technologies on which… Read More
Augmented reality glasses may be stuck in the dorky phase for the foreseeable future but smartphone-based augmented reality is only going to grow more popular moving forward. Outside of Pokemon-catching, the primary augmented reality applications being used in the wild have been smart filters in apps like Snapchat and MSQRD which superimpose digital images or animations onto users’… Read More
No surprise, really, that connected home sales experienced a surge last year. Between the seemingly exponential number of new players and driving pushes from major companies like Apple, Google and Amazon, the market’s been pretty tough to avoid. In a new study released this week, NPD is offering some insight into the phenomenon, noting that the home automation market saw a 57-percent… Read More
