Travel tech startup FLYR raised $8 million in Series A funding for technology that predicts the price of airfare by applying artificial intelligence to a database of both open industry data and a proprietary collection of years of past prices and fluctuations. The funding round was led by a Peter Thiel fund, and, according to an SEC filing, Thiel Capital principal Phin Upham was involved in… Read More
Former ( ) President Obama is heading off for a well-earned vacation, but before going to his undisclosed but hopefully sunny and isolated location, he took to his old personal Twitter handle, @BarackObama, to promote the launch of his new website, Obama.org. Read More
Remember “Bang With Friends?” The controversial app, which later rebranded as Down, was acquired by Singapore-based dating startup Paktor (they’re, um… hooking up). The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’re told it was several million. After raising just $1 million, it was a “positive outcome” for investors like Tim Draper. Paktor has pulled… Read More
Originally positioned as a medium for projects to garner modest seed funding from a diverse group of supporters, crowdfunding platforms have evolved. Yes, crowdfunding has produced some inspiring success stories. However, it also has facilitated the transfer of significant sums of money to teams that ultimately proved themselves to be incompetent, leaving backers with nothing. Read More
Twitter just can’t seem to let go of Vine. The company announced last fall it would close the video-sharing community site and its accompanying mobile applications, which it then did just days ago. But it also has taken several steps to ensure that the content created in Vine would not be lost, by offering tools to export videos, both online and in its app. Today, in another move to… Read More
Amazon’s latest (physical) Dash button is like a “I’m Feeling Lucky” for candy.
When pressed, the button will send you a box with a random assortment of small-batch candy made by “artisans from across the nation.” The box will cost $18 (with two-day free Prime shipping, of course) and can be ordered as many times as you want.
The program is called Prime… Read More
What started as a rough week for Qualcomm just got worse. Apple is piling onto the lawsuit train just ahead of the weekend, following in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s footsteps with a roughly billion-dollar suit against the San Diego-based mobile chipmaker.
Apple was specifically named in the recent FTC filing, which accused Qualcomm of engaging in an anti-competitive “no… Read More
President Trump is officially the 45th president of the United States. Minutes after the inauguration, the White House’s LGBT rights page disappeared, as well as any mention of the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” The @POTUS Twitter account has been handed over to Trump and the first thing he tweeted was a Facebook link. Read More
Hey do you want to go far, far away from this place right now for some reason? Check out Pluto – it’s far. NASA created a video (via Gizmodo) made up of around 100 images snapped by the New Horizons probe, which launched in 2006 and which completed a flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015. The video includes photos shot by New Horizons, but scientists took the black and white originals… Read More
A new website called Track Trump has launched to monitor the progress President Trump makes on fulfilling his promises for his first 100 days in office. At the end of October, Trump released a plan called “Donald Trump’s Contract With The American Voter,” which focuses on cleaning up Washington, protecting American workers, and restoring the rule of law. The plan’s… Read More
Our microbiomes: who understands them? Scientists? The bacteria colonizing our guts? The guy who made the Mexican food we just ate? Wrong. It’s our computers. Researchers have tasked them to create a new way to analyze and understand our microbiomes electronically. The service is called “Functional Shifts’ Taxonomic Contributors” or, obviously, FishTaco. The system,… Read More
Despite its massive success with viewers, Google always had a hard time convincing advertisers that its video platform was the best place for them to reach their target audiences. Now, Google promises to give advertisers and agencies better tools to measure their reach and target specific audiences — all with a focus on mobile. As Google notes in today’s announcement, 50 percent… Read More
I’ve done it all. I have a standing desk. I have a sitting ball. I have a treadmill. And now I just might go back to where it all started with the Edge Desk. This Kickstarter darling raised $500,000 to produce what amounts to a portable kneeling desk. It has a huge work surface – 20×30 inches – and costs $350 for the entry level model. It folds up flat for storage and… Read More
It’s official. As of about an hour ago Donald Trump is the 45th President of The United States of America. One question regarding the transition was how the social media handoff would occur between outgoing former President Obama and President Trump. And now about an hour in, some of these accounts are starting to switch over. The most important one is probably @POTUS on Twitter, which… Read More
Uber is picking up a lot of ex-Googlers lately – earlier on Thursday, I reported that ex-Google SVP of Engineering Amit Singhal was headed to the ride-hailing startup, and former Google VP of Engineering on YouTube’s ads team Kevin Thompson is also joining the company as VP of Marketplace Engineering. That means Thompson will report into his former colleague Singhal, Uber… Read More
Trump’s administration is acting quickly to dangerously reimagine reality. It has deleted all specific mentions of “climate change” and “global warming,” as well as removed an entire page dedicated to the subject at the http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/climate-change URL, which is no longer an active link.
UPDATE: While it’s typical to archive previous… Read More
And so the transition of power begins. First up is the WhiteHouse.gov site where several pages are now changing or altogether disappearing — including a page on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. It’s just been over an hour since Trump took office and whitehouse.gov/lgbt has now been replaced by a Trump “transitionsplash” page. Update: There’s no… Read More
A new company named Sigma, founded by alumni of mobile app search engine Quixey, aims to take records and certifications currently trapped in the analog world and bring them online. To do so, the company has raised $4.35 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors. The idea originated in late 2014, during a scuba trip in Belize that Sigma cofounder and… Read More
I’ve found that the most valuable design tool in the 21st century is rather old-fashioned: customer feedback. Technology has produced huge breakthroughs in design. A product can be ideated, prototyped and finalized with little more than a keyboard and code. But the ingenuity of modern design often leads to product teams neglecting the basics. Read More
Singhal will be heading up the Maps and Marketplace departments at Uber, while also advising CEO Travis Kalanick and Uber VP of Engineering and Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski on their efforts to build out the company’s self-driving technology. The last time we in tech news circles heard from Singhal, he was saying goodbye after a 15-year career at Google, in a farewell letter… Read More
