Twitter thinks it has identified your BFF. The company is currently testing a new feature that will highlight the tweets from a select, single account that Twitter thinks you’ll want to see. Yes: a single person’s tweets will get their own special spot on your timeline. The feature is similar to Twitter’s “In Case You Missed It…” which rounds up the tweets… Read More
Some news today from Dwolla, the startup that competes with banks (but also works with them) to provide payments and money transfers with reduced fees by way of more efficient software. The company has raised another round of funding of $6.85 million, and at the same time it’s announcing the relaunch of its white-label API, which it is now calling Access API. The funding round was led… Read More
New York City startup Slidejoy has been acquired by South Korean competitor Buzzvil.
Both companies offer a way for Android users to earn rewards in exchange for allowing ads on their lockscreens — in Buzzvil’s case, that’s both through its HoneyScreen consumer app and through its BuzzScreen platform for publishers.
The financial terms are not being disclosed, but Slidejoy… Read More
Happy Inauguration Day (ughhh). Anti-Donald Trump protestors are outside of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters. Protestors have linked arms outside Uber’s entrance, chanting, “Donald Trump, go away. Racist sexist, anti-gay.” They’re protesting Uber because the company’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, is a member of Trump’s Strategic and Policy forum. That… Read More
AT&T’s new live TV streaming service DirecTV Now has been off to a shaky start in terms of performance, but that hasn’t stemmed the flow of sign-ups, AT&T reports. The company said the service added more than 200,000 subscribers in its first month of operations. These details were included in an SEC filing for the quarter ending on December 31, 2016. DirecTV Now launched… Read More
“We want to get closer to this kind of perfect representation, so you can capture a moment you had.” The medium of virtual reality is a new one, one that may eventually allow these perfect representations and perfect fictions, but its true power (and danger) lies in its ability to turn anything into what feels like a personal experience. Embodying the emotions of the viewer is at… Read More
Fake news has been top of mind for a lot of people as of late. After the presidential election in the U.S. and public outcry over the prevalence of false information on Facebook, the company announced measures to prevent fake news from appearing on the platform. But there are still concerns about the civic consequences of fake news and the effect it has on people once it’s already… Read More
Trump’s an unorthodox sort with, by most accounts, a fairly tenuous grasp on modern technologies. Until relatively recently, there was a seemingly open question regarding whether the soon-to-be sworn in leader of the free world ever actually used a computer.
But the guy loves his smartphone. Since the campaign, Trump has relied fairly heavily on an Android handset for sending out… Read More
Amazon has just made it easier to repurchase your favorite items from its online store. The company on Thursday added virtual “Dash” buttons to its homepage and mobile app that let you click to buy the product they represent – like diapers, paper towels, medicine, groceries, household items, pet supplies, and more. Dash buttons, in case you’re not familiar, have been… Read More
Sony’s virtual reality headset has offered some form of support for 360-degree YouTube content since around Christmas time of last year, but as Engadget points out, things have been pretty spotty at best. The update was only being rolled out to select users, and the video experience was less than ideal, thanks to resolutions that didn’t quite live up to the full 360-degree… Read More
Few will need reminding today is the day Donald Trump gets sworn in as president of the US. But it’s not just millions of Americans worried for their future under a Trump administration: four out of five Brits are afraid that the incoming president will use their personal data for his personal gain. Read More
Tesla’s new 100 kWh battery pack first arrived with a “performance” designation, hence the “P” in P100D, but now the company has released the 100D version of the upgrade option, which delivered the same capacity, but tweaked for efficiency rather than speed. The 100D option was added early Friday morning, promising an additional 20 miles of range based on EPA… Read More
Samsung is holding a press conference in three days to explain the defect in the Galaxy Note 7 that forced the product’s recall, but already it is being reported that wrongly-sized batteries were the primary cause of some units combusting. Read More
If you thought the problems Rocket Internet has had bringing its portfolio of startups and its business overall into the black would have spelled setbacks for future investing, think again. This week, the firm — based out of Berlin — reported that it had raised a new $1 billion fund, the biggest tech fund of any VC firm to date in Europe, it claims. The Rocket Internet… Read More
A thirty-strong group of security researchers have co-signed an open letter calling for the Guardian to retract a story it published last week that had claimed mobile messaging app WhatsApp contains a “backdoor”. The newspaper suggests users switch to the Signal app instead. Read More
Accel, the VC firm that has been involved in some of the biggest deals in the most recent tech boom — startups backed include Facebook, Supercell, Dropbox, Deliveroo, Slack and Atlassian, Spotify, Flipkart and many more — has appointed a new partner, Luciana Lixandru. Her rise at Accel — she was previously a principal investor — speaks to the evolution of… Read More
You’ve probably seen a Meitu selfie in your Instagram or Facebook feed in the past 24 hours. The app smoothes skin, slims down faces, and even applies a layer of virtual blush and lipgloss, adding a beautifying effect to your photos. And although the app has been popular in China for years — Meitu went public in Hong Kong last month — it only recently caught on with… Read More
Hanging out with the CEO of Zoom Eric Yuan and talking about the most recent investment for Sequoia for $100 million, LinkedIn’s major desktop update, and the NHTSA fully exonerates Tesla’s AutoPilot. All this on Crunch Report Read More
I had a great time out here at CES 2017 in Las Vegas — every once in a while I got to sneak away and walk around a little bit and check out the goodies. A little walking here, a little checking stuff out there. Sometimes I fell asleep under tables… it’s just the nature of the beast. Sometimes people wanted me to check out their product, but I couldn’t do it right away… Read More
