Joy, a startup aiming to help brides-to-be plan their weddings in the digital age, has pulled in $4.5 million in seed capital. Joy launched out of Y Combinator this summer with aims to take on what some might think of as a crowded industry. There are plenty of wedding websites in existence but many more popular sites like MyWedding.com, WeddingWire and TheKnot.com popped up years ago… Read More
No matter how this election ends one thing is clear: what happens online in the next decade will have an increasingly important effect on our daily lives. Until recently politics, warfare, commerce, and education has mostly been offline. That will change drastically in the next ten years. But isn’t the world already digital? Most of it is but the places that it isn’t – parts… Read More
The main IP of a startup called Cognovi Labs is a tool called Twitris. Twitris uses both human and machine learning to interpret Twitter traffic to predict sentiment. The tool can also quantify a range of emotional reactions that whole regions of the world are collectively feeling. The startup is following a host of election competitions today and publishing their findings on their Twitter feed. Read More
A number of Comcast users noticed this morning that the channel NBC has disappeared from the programming guide on their TV – an odd and unfortunately timed glitch on Election Day here in the U.S. Many have been complaining on Twitter about the problem, posting screenshots that show the channel’s disappearance while tweeting at Comcast-run Twitter accounts for answers. The… Read More
If you were focused on, um, other things this morning, you may well have missed the launch of the HD6XX. The bad news is that the extremely limited edition Sennheiser/Massdrop team up looks to have sold out already. A rep from the company tells TechCrunch, “With the popularity of the drop this morning, we nearly broke the internet.” Sales on the $200 headphones are currently halted… Read More
It’s easy to appreciate why Bambrogan hired the firm to filter media inquiries. When it comes to handling crisis situations in particular, Sitrick is as well-regarded as they come. Its approach, neatly captured by its tagline, is: “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.”
“We’ve been in a tricky position a number of times and the… Read More
Slack is great for taking lunch orders and sharing GIFs with an international team (as us about “Whiplash Wednesday!”) but it breaks down when you try to get real work done. That’s why Slingr exists. Created by experienced product manager Grace F. Schroeder, Slingr was designed first as a platform and then as a product. Shroeder wanted something that a disparate team could use… Read More
Google today announced the launch of the Tokyo region of its cloud computing platform. With this, the Google Cloud Platform now features two regions (Tokyo and Taiwan) and a total of six availability zones in Asia. In the Asia-Pacific region, the plan is to also open new regions in Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney over the course of the next year, in addition to new regions in the U.S.,… Read More
That social media post could disqualify your vote. Snap your #ImWithHer or #MAGA selfie without your ballot. It violates voting laws in many states to take a photo with your completed ballot, or even inside the polling place in some locations.
Breaking the voter secrecy laws can get you one to three years in prison or a fine depending on where you live, though they’re not always enforced. Read More
When crowdsourced labor company CrowdFlower recently raised funding from Microsoft, co-founder Lukas Biewald told me his team was focused on technology that allows businesses to supplement algorithms and artificial intelligence with human judgment from crowdsourced labor pools. Now CrowdFlower bringing on more experts to shape the development of that technology. Specifically it’s… Read More
As Messenger continues its steady growth as a communications channel distinct from its social network parent Facebook, the company today is taking the wraps off a new version of the platform that will give developers some new tools for how they present content in it, but it also opens the door wider to a new phase of how Messenger is evolving: get ready for more Messenger traffic from… Read More
Google has been working throughout this election to make voting information more accessible, and today that continues with an integration in Google Maps that will help users find their polling place. When you launch Google Maps on web or mobile and prepare to type into the search box, a banner pops up at the top of the screen which reads, “Find your Polling Place.” Clicking on… Read More
Samsung is no doubt eager to put this whole Note 7 situation behind it as quickly as possible. In fact, the company apparently can’t stop talking up the Galaxy S8, even though that device is still a few months over the horizon. But of the seven stages of exploding smartphone grief, Samsung is currently on the apology tour part, issuing an open letter to readers both on its site and… Read More
There’s still a little time to get a handset out before year’s end. And while increased competition from a number of relative new manufacturers (not to mention Google) have seemingly made things a bit more crowded, Samsung’s recent struggles have, perhaps, left an opening for another flagship. At just under three years old, OnePlus certainly still qualifies as a newcomer, but… Read More
Meet Karma, GoPro’s long-promised drone. The Karma is capable, packable and easy to fly. And since it uses GoPro’s best cameras, the picture quality is superb. In the end, GoPro is a camera company that made a drone. The Karma drone is first and foremost an accessory for GoPro cameras and thus it hits the market with a unique value proposition. Read More
A controversial decision this summer by Facebook-owned messaging giant WhatsApp to share data on its users with its parent company — including for advertising purposes — continues to attract the ire of European regulators. Now Facebook has agree to pause data sharing in the UK, following an investigation by data protection watchdog, the ICO. Read More
Welcome to another episode of Social Media Managers Who Are Having a Bad Day. On todays episode we present Asus‘ assertion that a “cute girl” with a cat worse than a “sophisticated lady” with a Zenbook 3(tm) laptop. On the surface this argument might be a little specious – after all, cats are pretty cool – but what is Asus really saying? *GRABBING… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6! One month to go! It will be the place to come talk about new technology, your startup, other startups, everyone’s startups! Grab tickets here. Today we’re delighted to say Alex (June) Zhu, cofounder of Musical.ly is also joining. As the Co-founder & Co-CEO of musical.ly, based out of San Francisco, he has been behind the… Read More
Streaming music subscriptions have not yet reached the critical mass that physical music sales and ownership once had, but some argue that this is due mainly to product-market fit, since many of the services have been built around the concept of a small pool of dedicated music fans rather than vast majority of more casual listeners. Now, another hopeful called Electric Jukebox is… Read More
Tesla just announced that it will acquire Germany’s Grohmann Engineering, in a deal that will see the global engineering leader become Tesla’s new Advanced Automation facility based in Germany, a new subdivision of the automaker dedicated to helping Tesla increase the automation and effectiveness of its manufacturing process.
“This will really be our first acquisition of… Read More
