Chao also addressed questions and concerns around tech innovation in transportation, specifically touching on autonomous vehicles, connected infrastructure, drones and more. In initial statements, Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) noted that the next U.S. secretary of transportation would have “a unique opportunity to show federal leadership in the advancement of… Read More
JetBlue today announced that it has officially completed its fleet-wide rollout of Fly-Fi, bringing free wireless internet to all of its planes. The carrier first introduced the service in late 2013, bringing speeds of around 12 to 15Mbps — far surprising the wireless offerings available on other domestic flights at the time. Along with installation on all of its planes, JetBlue has… Read More
Twitter announced today it’s shutting down a feature called Dashboard, launched last summer, that allows businesses a suite of tools to track tweets, schedule posts, access analytics, monitor tweets about their brand or other keywords and more. The company says that Dashboard will be fully shuttered on February 3rd, 2017, but there’s not a solid transition plan in terms of how… Read More
Celmatix, a startup with a focus on personalized medicine for women, wants to take some of the mystery out of the science of baby-making with a new type of DNA-based fertility test called Fertilome. Fertilome looks at 49 variants in 32 genes that give you a likelihood or not for inherited disorders such as endometriosis or PCOS to help women determine the best course of action to take based… Read More
Google is launching a new key management service for its Cloud Platform today that will help enterprises — especially in regulated industries like healthcare and banking — create, use, rotate and destroy their encryption keys in the cloud. The aptly named Google Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS) is now available as a beta in select countries. Enterprises have… Read More
Bootstrapping London-based startup GigRove is looking to carve out a niche in the collaborative consumption space as a matching platform for digital workers with itchy feet and startups with a spare room and pressing skills need. Which is all very zeitgeisty in these digital nomad/citizen of nowhere times. Read More
A feature that will allow Google Maps users to make lists of places is getting closer to public launch. A number of Google Maps users this month have uncovered a new addition to their Google Maps mobile application — a way to make lists of starred and favorite places, as well as create buckets lists of those places they want to visit, and a means to build out their own custom lists.… Read More
Ann Arbor, Michigan-based FarmLogs has raised $22 million in a Series C round of funding for technology that helps farmers monitor and measure their crops, predict profits, manage risks from weather and pests and more. Naspers Ventures led the round, joined by the company’s earlier backers Drive Capital, Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, SV Angel and individual… Read More
Commercial drone maker Kespry, which launched in 2013, announced it was bringing in industry vet George Mathew as CEO today.
Mathew, who most recently was president and COO at data analytics startup Alteryx, has also had stints as GM of Business Intelligence at SAP and director of Technical Account Management at Salesforce. It’s fair to say that Kespry was interested in his data… Read More
Oakland-based food startup Kuli Kuli has raised $4.25 million in a Series A round of funding to bring moringa, a high-protein plant, to more kitchens in the U.S., according to CEO and co-founder Lisa Curtis. During her time working in Niger for the Peace Corps, Curtis got a taste for the moringa plant, which grows pervasively in tropical climates and is higher in iron, calcium and protein… Read More
As consumers have shifted to the web to order and pay for services like broadband and insurance, price comparison sites have become one of the main ways that they search for the best deals to cover what they need. Today, one of the bigger companies in the space in Europe, CompareEuropeGroup, announced it has raised €20 million ($21 million) to expand and move ahead of the pack. The… Read More
Amazon announced this morning it’s teaming up with Chase to introduce a new Visa credit card exclusively for its most loyal customers, Prime members. The card offers Prime members 5 percent back on Amazon purchases, as well as other rewards, including 2 percent back at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores, and 1 percent back everywhere else. This is not Amazon’s first entry… Read More
Norway’s plan to end FM radio kicks off today, as planned. The move will shift the country’s remaining national analog stations to Digital Audio Broadcasting by year’s end, part of a cost-saving measure for a small country with many natural obstacles that have proven expensive to bring signal to its five million residents. The Norwegian government has moved ahead with the… Read More
Between fake news and publishers struggling to keep a loyal connection to their readers, Facebook’s relationship with the journalism business is a bit strained right now. So today Facebook is revealing its roadmap of upcoming news features that it calls “The Facebook Journalism Project” to make its commitment to the industry clear. These future launches include digest packages… Read More
The iPad Pro is a clutch drawing tool for when you’re on the go, but it’s missing a lot of the pro software that working artists require to get their job done. Astropad, a company that has focused on making second-screen software for iPad to use with a connected Mac, is debuting Astropad Studio today, a new version of its software that adds a lot of customizable options to… Read More
Speaking at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, key original iPod team member and Nest founder Tony Fadell explained why Detroit is such an ideal place to test autonomous vehicles. He points out (via Katie Burke on Twitter) that Detroit has two key ingredients: a low population, and a lot of existing city infrastructure. Detroit’s population is currently around 680,000, which… Read More
No one has a crystal ball. Armed with loads of startup data, the research outfit Crunchbase has nevertheless churned through some numbers to create an interesting snapshot of what happened in 2016 — and what might happen in 2017 — by examining six distinct trends. The first trend — and it’s given the most weight in the report — centers largely on where funding… Read More
Instagram Stories now has as many users as the last number announced by Snapchat, the app Instagram copied. And it’s swiftly moving to monetize that massive audience. Along with the new 150 million daily user stat, Instagram today announced the launch of ads mixed into Stories. The unclickable five-second photo and 15-second video ads appear between different people’s stories and… Read More
Transmit Security, a new security startup that wants to make it easier for developers to implement biometric authentication, came out of stealth today with $40 million in self-funding. With all of the high-profile hacks over the last several years from the DNC to Sony to Target; it’s clear that we need better ways to prevent unauthorized access to our computer networks. One of the… Read More
A GCHQ-backed startup incubator has opened its doors in the UK, announcing its first cohort of seven startups participating in the three month accelerator program (see below for the list of teams). Read More
