Osram Opto Semiconductors has announced the availability of a LIDAR package – essentially the spinning laser array found on self-driving and mapping vehicles – that costs $5 and works as well as $70,000 tower systems and hockey-puck sized $8,000 systems. This mini-LIDAR has four laser diodes connected together to ensure accuracy without tuning. The kit also includes tiny mirrors… Read More
There is nothing sexy about procurement but it’s an essential task in the day-to-day life of virtually any business, not-for-profit and school. Vancouver, Canada-based Procurify wants to take some of the pain out of this process with the help of its online and mobile purchasing and accounts payable platform. As the company announced today, it has raised a $7 million Series A round led… Read More
Jaguar’s showing off the I-PACE, an electric concept SUV that it’s aiming to bring to production sometime in 2018. The I-PACE looks like a sensible small utility vehicle, with a five-door design and performance-tuned features including a target 0-60mph time of “around” four seconds, a 310+ mile range and a 50kW DC charging mechanism that helps it reclaim 80 percent of… Read More
GE Digital today announced that it has acquired Wise.io, a machine-learning powered service that helps businesses find patterns and trends in their vast data stores. At first glance, that may seem like an odd acquisition for a company like GE. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that with Predix, GE already offers its customers a service that focuses on helping them monitor their… Read More
Super Mario Run, the iOS game Nintendo revealed at Apple’s September event, will arrive on the App Store December 15. The game will be free to download, with some elements available to try, and a $9.99 one-time in-app purchase will provide access to the full game, which Nintendo says will include three modes. The game stars the titular Mario, as he propels himself through a… Read More
Skyport Systems has released new security analytics features to complement the network security controls and virtualization tools on its cloud-managed server profudcts. The company now offers tools that can detect deviations in the administrative accounts and inappropriate credentialing that are indicative of a corporate network compromised by hackers. According to the company, the new… Read More
How does a health insurance company go about trying to help address health problems before they arise? Getting people moving is a start. After all, there are plenty of long issues that can be avoided or lessened by living a more active lifestyle, a motivation that becomes all the more apparently as our lives tend increasingly toward the sedentary. The jury’s still out on the efficacy… Read More
Gluru, a UK-based startup that’s building an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered task manager, has raised a $2 million seed round. Backers include Sussex Place Ventures, SaatchInvest, Gecad, and Playfair Capital. It brings total funding for Gluru to $3.5 million. Read More
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research non-profit backed by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, a Donald Trump fan called Peter Thiel, and numerous other tech luminaries, is partnering with Microsoft to tackle the next set of challenges in the still-nascent field. OpenAI will also make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform, in part because of its… Read More
Nothing in my home costs $1,500, so it’s tough to get past the sticker shock. Price aside, the June Intelligent Oven stands up to the hype. It is a classy looking appliance. The fit and finish of the product is solid and you can tell just by looking at it that it’s high-end. Read More
In the wake of the U.S. Election, as Facebook and Google come under fire for the dissemination of fake “news” in their News Feed and search results, Twitter is tackling another area that’s been a flashpoint issue not only recently, but for years: the social media platform today is unveiling some major updates to its safety policy, aimed at helping users weed out… Read More
Before today, people on Tinder only had two options for their gender: male and female. Three years after Tinder CEO Sean Rad told me the company wanted to be better for trans and gender non-conforming people, Tinder has added a feature that will let people provide more accurate information about their gender identity.
“Well, look, it’s not a race,” Rad told me. Read More
Cars are on their way to pooling their collective smarts, but vehicles that have built-in communication tech and intelligence processing are still a ways off for many. Nexar is a startup hoping to make collective collision avoidance a more achievable reality in the short-term, using their Ai-based dash cam app. Nexar’s app is available for iOS and Android, and uses your phone’s… Read More
Luckily, the game delivers a lot for players both old and new, with plenty of familiar fun, but a fresh feeling world and replacement for the Gym system that brings new life to the franchise. Islands of adventure This latest 3DS Pokémon game brings the franchise to a set of islands that is pretty clearly based on Hawaii, called the ‘Alola Region’ in game. The tropical Alola… Read More
Apple never looks back, except when it does, which is every month now. The company announced that it is releasing a hardbound photo book showcasing some of the most iconic Apple designs from the last 20 years. The book will be released tomorrow on Apple.com and in flagship American Apple stores. They will be available in two sizes. The small one will cost $199 while the big one will cost $299.… Read More
Snapchat’s ongoing marketing campaign for Spectacles continues to mean you can only buy them from a single Snapbot deployed at a single location, for a limited time. Today’s spot is just outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, the third location after Venice Beach in LA last week, and Big Sur in norther California on Sunday. The new location is the first beyond the west coast, and my colleague… Read More
Kit, the Expa-backed platform for product recommendation, has today announced the close of a $2.5 million from Social Capital, Precursor Ventures, April Underwood, Ellen Pao, Authentic Ventures, Black Angel Tech Fund, and Expa. Kit lets users choose and review products they’ve used and owned to build ‘kits’. These kits normally focus on a certain theme or category like… Read More
Level 5 self-driving tech is the highest variety, which aims for fully autonomous vehicles with no need of human steering mechanisms. AdasWorks, a Budapest-based startup launched in 2015, is charing its name to AImotive and expanding to a new U.S.-based Mountain View office to further its efforts in making Level 5 autonomy a lived reality for people and cars. AImotive’s goal is to offer… Read More
Sauce Labs, a cloud-based software testing service, announced a $70 million round today. The investment is more than double the $31 million the company had raised across four previous rounds and brings the total investment to $101 million. Centerview Capital Technology, IVP, and Adams Street Partners all participated. Under the terms of the deal, Buno Pati, partner at Centerview and… Read More
