Since the covers came off Starry Internet early last year, the startup has mostly been in trial mode, rolling out its unique technology in a limited trial around its Boston headquarters and showing it off to select press.
Starry’s solution has been the subject of much speculation and excitement, promising a potential alternative to internet company lockdowns by beaming broadband speed… Read More
Amazon Rapids, the tech company’s new attempt at getting children interested in reading through a chat-based mobile app, is arriving today on Amazon Fire tablets. The app was first introduced last month as a subscription-based service that lets kids read stories across a variety of categories that are told in the style of chat sessions. That is, both the text and the illustrations are… Read More
Connected city infrastructure and cars that talk back could potentially do a lot to help ease traffic conditions, but in the meantime, the city of Montréal in Quebec, Canada is using a more immediately available tech to try to address its urban traffic problem: Bluetooth. The city has installed over a hundred Bluetooth signal detectors over the past couple of months, with the aim of being able… Read More
Uber is the scourge of taxi drivers worldwide, but sometimes the two can pull in the same direction. Like in Indonesia today, for example, where Uber inked a partnership with the country’s second largest taxi cab provider, Express Group, to allow its drivers to use the on-demand service to boost their income. Read More
Kik, the chat app that’s hugely popular with teens and young people in North America, is finally adding video chat to its service. Video with a twist, that is. Read More
A former smartphone powerhouse wants to be an instrumental part of the coming smart car revolution, and BlackBerry is deepening its investment int he field with a new autonomous driving research center opening for business on Monday in Ottawa, Reuters reports. BlackBerry is one of three initial organizations to get clearance from the government of Ontario to test self-driving vehicles in… Read More
After failing to complete its $1.96 billion merger with Polycom earlier this year when Polycom instead got acquired by Siris Capital for $2 billion, today Mitel Networks began the process of streamlining its business to go forth alone, or find another acquisition or merger as a simpler company. Today Mitel announced that it would divest Mitel Mobility, its mobile operations, to Xura for… Read More
Like many startups that have been in the AR space for more than a couple years, Lumus got its start building tech for the military where its optics technology was integrated into the helmets of Air Force fighter pilots. Today, the Tel Aviv-based AR display company is beginning to shift its attention towards consumer and enterprise customers as it places a major bet on smart glasses… Read More
The battle for satellite-powered internet is heating up. Weeks after Tesla asked the U.S. Government for permission to launch a service powered by thousands of satellites above the Earth, rival project OneWeb has raised $1.2 billion in new funding to get things rolling as soon as 2019. Read More
Thundersoft, a company out of China that designs operating systems for drones and other connected devices, has made an acquisition to drive deeper into automotive technology: it has paid €64 million ($68 million; RMB471 million) for Rightware, a company out of Helsinki that develops graphical user interfaces for connected devices, with a special focus on automotive: its Kanzi product… Read More
2016 is almost out but there’s just time to anoint one more ride-sharing unicorn. Careem, one of Uber’s lower profile rivals in emerging markets, has taken a step into the global limelight today after it announced that it has raised $350 million led by Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten and Saudi Telecom Company (STC). Read More
Memebox, a Y Combinator startup that sells Korean beauty products in the U.S. and Asia, has raised $60 million. The cash is an extension of the firm’s Series C round which initially closed at $65.95 million in August. Read More
NoBroker, the India-based property startup that wants to make property agents obsolete, has landed $7 million in fresh funding to expand its service. Read More
Waymo, the newly-minted Alphabet company that was previously Google’s self-driving car project, has a new addition to its vehicle fleet: 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans, which were produced by Fiat Chrysler specifically for the purpose of making them fully autonomous using Waymo’s tech, onboard computer power, sensors and telematics. The 100 new cars will join… Read More
At 10pm on June 23, 2016, the polls closed in the UK on a referendum on EU membership and the counting began. The next morning Europeans woke to the news that the British public had voted to leave the 28 Member State bloc called the European Union. The ugly word Brexit — coined during the campaign as a shorthand media conflation for ‘British exit’ — was apparently… Read More
Everyone loves to joke how venture capital is the “Dark Side,” and most of the VCs I know are good-natured about simply accepting the comparison. It’s probably better than “vulture capital,” which was how we were ridiculed when I first started in the business in the early 90s. At my prior fund, my DFJ Frontier co-founder David Cremin coined the term… Read More
Copycats are a dying breed. Each month the gap shrinks between a new digital service emerging in the U.S. and it being copied in other markets. This trend has big implications for global businesses, forcing them to rethink investment and innovation strategies. Read More
For your weekend consumption I present Find my Phone, a 30 minute film about a stolen phone. The filmmaker, Anthony van der Meer, rigged an Android cellphone with Cerebus, a command-and-control system for Android that can survive a memory wipe. The app allowed van der Meer to record video, take photos, and even listen in on calls – all while tracking the phone around Amsterdam. Van der… Read More
One has to appreciate how Paul Graham built Y Combinator into the world’s flagship accelerator. In fact, I have yet to meet a founder who regrets joining the program. But after stepping away from the YC scene for five years and then returning to observe the last two demo days, I wonder if some of the views Paul shared in his original, widely read Essays are being taken to absurd extremes. Read More
We’re in the mid-digital age, but we live with the legacy of analog systems, technology and thinking that’s only embellished by the technologies of our new era. Read More
