Alphabet subsidiary Boston Dynamics doesn’t have much to prove when it comes to producing the robots of your nightmares. Previous iterations of the company’s prototypes have been kicked over by humans only to stand right back up, for example. But at an event this week, founder Marc Raibert managed to unveil something simultaneously more unsettling and technologically… Read More
Everyone can recognize great interior design. But it’s much harder to actually design a space and pick out all the items you need to make it look great. Hutch, a Los Angeles-based startup, is aiming to fix this. Read More
Sheryl Sandberg has been in the news lately for her opposition to the global gag rule and her more recent comments on Trump’s highly controversial and discriminatory immigration ban. Today at the Watermark Conference for Women in Silicon Valley in San Jose, Sandberg spoke about politics, President Donald Trump and leaning in (obvi), in an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher.… Read More
A new trends report published by the law firm Cooley report suggests that the venture market remains largely healthy for now. In the fourth quarter, for example, Cooley handled 187 “disclosable” (versus stealth) deals that represented more than $2.7 billion of invested capital. That’s 18 percent more deals than it closed in the fourth quarter of 2015 — though the… Read More
In tech, we often think a few steps further down the road. But sometimes, the present needs some serious addressing. This is one of those times.
As we draw closer to the 10th Annual Crunchies Awards Show, we figured now was a great time to highlight the nominees for the Social Impact Award, which goes to the person or organization that uses technology to create social change.
Here are the… Read More
Trying and failing to be clever on social media? Want your friends to think you’re naturally funny? A new app called CapGenius aims to help. This fun little addition to your iPhone keyboard offers a search engine for quips, puns, quotes, lyrics and other phrases that you can quickly pop into your Instagram posts, status updates, snaps, tweets, texts, and more.
The app was created by… Read More
At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, one of the big topics of conversation was education. Despite billions poured into programmes in developing countries to educate booming populations, the budgets are just scratching the surface. UNESCO estimates that the world would have to increase education development spending to $39 billion a year, or about three times current levels, if it was… Read More
Waymo’s self-driving software had far fewer disengagements in 2016 than it did in 2015 in the state of California, despite a big increase in the number of miles driven overall. The California Department of Motor Vehicles just published Waymo’s most recent disengagement report, which tracks al the times that a self-driving software system must be turned off in a test cars –… Read More
New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman isn’t mincing words in his State Supreme Court lawsuit against Charter’s Spectrum cable, the ISP formerly known as Time Warner Cable. “The allegations in today’s lawsuits confirm what many of you have long suspected,” Schneiderman said during a press conference today. “Spectrum-Time Warner has been ripping… Read More
Google announced several new products today aimed at luring IT pros who are using Windows in their data centers to the Google Cloud Platform. With that in mind, Google introduced support for Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise and Windows Server Core on the Cloud Platform. In addition, the company announced support for SQL Server Always-On Availability Group for customers who are concerned about… Read More
iPhone 7 sales put Apple back on top as the world’s top smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics, which attributed at least some of the growth to Apple’s ability to capitalize on Samsung’s recent missteps. The latter, of course, is referring to the Note 7 battery recall, which had led to exploding devices due to design… Read More
DigitalBridge is a U.K. startup based in Manchester and backed by John Lewis via the 150 year-old apartment store’s accelerator. The company is taking a different and, on the surface at least, simpler approach to letting you “try on” home décor products before purchasing. Read More
Snap, Inc. is working on an updated version of its in-app Snapchat lenses that would be able to recognize landscapes as well as faces, according to The Information, and intelligently overlay augmented reality animations and objects overtop of scenes captured through your camera. This is different from its existing smart Lenses, which can add features like snowfall to scenes, because it can… Read More
Twitter’s employee resource group for African-Americans, Blackbirds, is launching a Twitter bot for Black History Month. The group is the first ERG at Twitter to use the tool, which Twitter launched in November. To chat with the bot, all you have to do is direct message @Blackbirds. From there, the bot will tell you one of four things: a today in #BlackHistory fact, a community event… Read More
Reserve, a startup offering table and customer management tools for restaurants, is announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding. When the company first launched in 2014, it billed itself as a “digital concierge” that would make it easier for diners to get reservations at top restaurants. Last year, it launched a new product called Reserve for Restaurants,… Read More
Facebook is rolling out a new section on mobile called “Discover People,” which encourages users to introduce themselves by updating their profile, then scroll through a list of upcoming events to see who else may also be going, as well as browse through lists of people in their city or who share the same employer. The feature, designed to facilitate connections between people… Read More
Now that we’ve collectively signed up for billions of dollars of unused SaaS subscriptions it’s time to subscribed to a tool that helps us manage those subscriptions. Enter Cardlife, another player in the exciting world of SaaS management. “SaaS management,” you say. “Isn’t that just for the rich and famous?” No! The company manages over $4.7 million… Read More
Emojis — not just a fun way to avoid writing actual words, but also an opportunity for ?
Well, Inmoji, a startup that creates emoji-focused marketing campaigns, is announcing that it has raised an additional $1.5 million, bringing its total funding to $9 million. This comes a week after announcing a self-serve platform that should make these emoji campaigns accessible to a… Read More
For most, wearables are little more than pedometers – ways of gauging how much one’s moved during the day and, hopefully, challenging them to do more in the future. It’s one of the factors in the space’s seeming plateau of late. But a wrist full of sensors can do a heck of a lot more than what they’re currently be utilized for. Researchers at MIT’s… Read More
WinkBeds, a direct-to-consumer mattress company that competes with other mattress startups like Casper and Tufts & Needle, is launching a mattress with built-in heating and cooling functionality. The device is called CoolControl, and is actually sits below WinkBeds’ mattress in lieu of a box spring. Each base contains four fans that work to suck in air from your bedroom. These… Read More
