The U.S. election has inspired more people to become politically involved, and one of the most practical and direct ways to have an impact is to directly call your Congressperson to have your voice heard. However scouring .gov websites can be a little frustrating, and today’s current crop of online resources for reaching Congress are often poorly designed or hard to locate. A new… Read More
It can be tough finding seasonal help. So naturally Westfield has started looking to robots for help staffing its shopping centers. Starting today, the Westfield San Francisco Centre and Westfield Valley Fair in the Silicon Valley will be employing Pepper robots to help improve the holiday shopping experience. At first Softbank’s friendly humanoid robot will mostly be there for show.… Read More
Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced a significant price drop for some of its storage services. In addition, it is also launched a few new features for developers who want to use its Glacier cold storage service. The new prices that most developers will likely care about are those for S3, AWS’ main cloud storage service. Instead of six pricing tiers, S3 will now use three: 0-50 TB;… Read More
Welcome to the 2016 TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide! We’ll be rolling out a bunch of guides leading up to Christmas, hopefully making your holiday shopping a little easier. As one of TechCrunch’s resident 20-somethings, I know firsthand that we’re not the easiest group of people to shop for. Do we want electronics? Clothes? Stuff for our first post-college, real life apartment?… Read More
Michigan’s new American Center for Mobility at the historic Willow Run one-time manufacturing complex broke ground this week, paving the way for the launch of the technologically advanced testbed for autonomous and connected vehicles. The 335-acre site will play host to a new facility designed to help automakers and other stakeholders globally test their cars, connected infrastructure… Read More
Wireless earbuds are still in their infancy, and there still seem to be some tough issues left to nail when it comes to mass production. Doppler Labs CEO Noah Kraft tells me that the because of manufacturing issues, the company will be delaying the release of their Here One smart earbuds until February 2017. Kraft tells TechCrunch that the company has received nearly 10,000 pre-orders for… Read More
Amazon is expanding the lineup of devices that will automatically reorder their supplies for you through the retailer’s Dash Replenishment service. The program, which brings instant reordering to connected devices – like washing machines that order your detergent, or printers that order your ink – now includes a new handful of Dash-enabled products from companies like… Read More
As Facebook’s advertising business continues to grow globally, the social network is also streamlining operations in certain markets. TechCrunch has learned that Facebook is consolidating sales operations in Europe focused on small and medium businesses. In the process has cut 30 jobs including in Hamburg, according to a source among those cut. The cuts are of… Read More
If you thought you heard the last on fake news, you were sadly mistaken. A Stanford study found that the majority of middle school students can’t tell the difference between real news and fake news. In fact, 82 percent couldn’t distinguish between a real news story on a website and a “sponsored content” post. Of the 8,704 students studied (ranging in age from middle… Read More
Apple has changed its stance on Black Friday. The company, which is now teasing its upcoming one-day deals via a new web page, will again participate in the holiday shopping event after having famously sat out last year, then touting its decision as part of its mission to be “good to…employees.” The new site doesn’t detail what deals will be available, but does promote… Read More
With a global presence that already spans more than 450 cities worldwide, it isn’t often that Uber expands into new countries, but today the U.S. ride-sharing giant drove into Bangladesh. Read More
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably pretty tough getting the public to notice your new browser. Most internet users are pretty set in their ways at this point. There are some pretty good options out there, and really, switching is a pain once you’ve got everything set to your liking. Launched last year by an ex-Opera chief exec, Vivaldi is targeted at power… Read More
As part of Code.org’s Hour of Code program, Disney is releasing “Moana: Wayfinding with Code,” a free online tutorial to teach kids the basics of computer science. The tutorial features characters from Moana, Disney’s upcoming animated feature film. In the past, the company has created coding tutorials featuring characters from Frozen and Star Wars. Through those… Read More
Tesla and SolarCity’s union is still very fresh, but the combined companies are already highlighting what they’ve been able to accomplish even just as partners. The SolarCity blog details a project in which SolarCity power generation and Tesla Powerpack-based storage helped the small island of Ta’u in American Samoa fix its spotty power problem and cut its reliance on a… Read More
Volkswagen’s EV plans include manufacturing in North America starting in 2021, according to the company. The new production expansion is part of VW’s goal to ramp up to sales of 1 million electric vehicles globally by 2025, as electric becomes “the strategic core of the VW brand,” according to Volkswagen brand lead Herbert Diess speaking to Automotive News. Part of… Read More
With Brexit now the ‘favorite’ topic of the UK media, for good or for ill, you’d think there would be a lot of interest in whether companies are moving or staying in the UK. And, of course, there is. What is much harder to discern however is where the talent is moving, or intending to move. Especially ‘millennial’ talent which is so mobile and nomadic these days. Read More
Aye Finance, a startup that specializes in micro-loans in India, has landed $10.3 million in new funding of its own led LGT and existing investors SAIF Partners and Accion. Read More
All the work that went into creating peer-to-peer payment app Cookies isn’t disappearing forever. After filing for bankruptcy, Swedish tech company Klarna approached the team behind Cookies so that they can join another fintech company. The entire Cookies team except one co-founder is joining Klarna. I don’t think the two co-founders can work together again after the big meltdown… Read More
Israeli startup SafeDK, which offers a mobile SDK management platform to help app developers stay on top of the multiple SDKs their apps increasingly rely on, has closed $3.5 million in Series A funding. Read More
