Facebook pulled the world back into the silent film era with its muted, auto-play videos, but its latest tool could make it easier to repurpose traditional clips. Facebook has launched a free, automatic video captioning tool to all US English Facebook Pages. TechCrunch and some other Pages only recently began seeing the quietly launched option, though Facebook responded to our inquiry saying… Read More
Freshdesk announced today that it has acquired Banglaore-based startup Pipemonk for an undisclosed amount. Pipemonk helps companies move data between cloud platforms, which should come in handy for Freshdesk and its partners.
Pipemonk, which was born as ZapStitch, had raised just over $2 million since it launched in 2014, with its primary funding round coming in May, 2015, when it landed $2… Read More
Automaker BMW is teaming up with suppliers Intel and Mobileye to deploy a fleet of test vehicles, numbering 40 in total, targeting a street date of sometime during the second half of 2017. The fleet deployment was announced Wednesday by the three partners at CES, and follows their July announcement of their initial decision to partner. Between July and now, BMW, Mobileye and Intel have… Read More
Americans suck at managing their money. As the country heads into the New Year, it’s clear that more than 57% of us are struggling financially, according to a study from the Center for Financial Services Innovation. And many of us will make New Year’s resolutions to be better about it. We’re planning to cut our credit card debt, manage our finances and start saving. We all… Read More
Fitbit’s already got some of the top-selling fitness trackers on the market, but as the space faces a potential over-saturation, continued success lies in partnerships. As such, the wearable maker’s been building up its Works With Fitbit ecosystem one piece at a time.
In the past year, Fitbit has added a couple of key partners, including a skill for Amazon Echo and an NBA 2K17… Read More
Stealthy mixed reality startup Magic Leap has been having a bit of a tough time on the publicity front of late… which likely explains why CEO Rony Abovitz felt the need to leapt into 2017 by penning a blog post aimed at putting some positive puff back into Magic Leap’s image. Read More
Analyst Gartner is projecting flat growth for worldwide device shipments; it says the combined shipments of PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones will total just 2.3 billion in 2017, the same as 2016 estimates — with no growth in these so-called “traditional” computing devices expected until 2018. Read More
Garmin never heads to a CES without a whole bunch of different products in two. Along with a whole bunch of in-car GPS devices (yes, people still make and buy in-car GPS devices), the navigation-turned-wearable maker is expanding its fitness focused offerings with the addition of a trio of new Fenix multisport watches—the Fenix 5, 5S and 5X, which are, as the name implies, all variations… Read More
Bicycle sharing services are primed to be a major focus for China’s startup scene this year. Now today, only the fourth day of 2017, comes the first mega-round for the space after Mobike announced its $215 million Series D funding. Read More
Asian Facebook clone Snow caught the attention of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who tried unsuccessfully to buy it last year, and it is continuing to grow steadily. The app’s Korean parent Naver today confirmed it crossed 100 million downloads in December, with 40-50 percent of its userbase active on the app each month. Read More
It’s fair to say that HappyFresh, one of a number of startups working to make the business of on-demand grocery shopping viable in Southeast Asia, didn’t have a great 2016. Read More
Platforms like Musical.ly and Vine have helped find the next-generation of internet stars, and Chinese internet giant is aiming to ride that digital media wave to help grow its presence in Southeast Asia. Read More
Mangoslab showed off its first product today. Nemonic is a $120 thermal printer that prints on sticky notes from your phone. That’s right – everyone’s favorite tool for passive-aggressively leaving notes on a colleague’s computer monitor is now weaponized with all the powers of IoT combined. Ladies and gentlemen, the future of office warfare is here. Read More
Boost is an impressive kit. The five on-board building experiences cover a lot of ground, from a robot to a guitar, to quasi Lego “3D printer” that’s more like an assembly line Rube Goldberg-style device that pieces together its own Lego creations.
The set is being couched as an educational kit, joining Lego’s line a step down in difficulty from the company’s… Read More
Drivers expect their cars and smartphones to seamlessly work together. Both Apple and Google offer their respective services for connecting phones to a car’s infotainment system, but the car industry isn’t ready to completely cede the center console to Silicon Valley. Ford and Toyota have long been unlikely allies in this area. A few years ago, with AppLink, Ford started giving… Read More
We have smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors that live in our house, sniffing the air for nasties, and beeping loudly if something has gone horribly wrong. Norwegian company Airthings wants to add Radon to the list of things you constantly monitor for, with the Wave radon detector. Read More
Hand-holding video always seems like such a good idea until you’re watching the footage back in the editing suite. Wobblycam is a pain in the backside and can take forever to fix in post-production. That is, in theory. Until SteadXP came along. Except not quite. Read More
Mayfield Robotics, a startup owned by Bosch, shows off the Kuri robot, Intel buys 15% of Here mapping business and electric bus company Proterra raises $140 million. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
At a very big event in Las Vegas ahead of CES, Faraday Future showed off the FF 91 — its first production car — and show off a few of its features. Faraday Future has been in the news a lot lately, but not necessarily for good reasons. In November, the company’s factory construction was paused and putting its targeted ship date at risk among a host of other issues. Faraday… Read More
Just when you thought wearables were dead, Plume Labs is coming up with an interesting wearable device focused on tracking pollution around you. It’s a sort of Fitbit for air quality. The Flow tracker works both inside and outside and could be particularly useful if you live in a polluted city. It tracks particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, ozone, volatile organic compounds… Read More
