Nintendo is courting nostalgia for the holidays this year, like pretty much every year — but the NES Classic Edition, a palm-size recreation of the original console with 30 games built-in, rates highly on the nostalgia scale even for a company whose heart is stuck in the 1980s. It’s already a highly coveted item for millions of 30-something gamers, and make no mistake: This is a… Read More
Back in June, Tend.ai came out of stealth with its versatile system allowing a robot arm to tend to a dozen or more printers, laser cutters and other modern workshop tools. Now the company has raised $2 million to continue its work, courtesy of True Ventures. Read More
As the race continues to pick up more subscribers for streaming music services, TechCrunch has learned that one of the most prominent players in the field quietly picked up some talent and tech to advance its position. Apple hired at least 16 employees and purchased select technology from Omnifone, an early player in streaming music services that filed for bankruptcy this summer. The… Read More
Facebook might muscle-in on LinkedIn’s recruiting business with ways for business Pages to promote job listings. The new Jobs features could give companies another reason to drive traffic to their Facebook Page beyond marketing their products in the News Feed, while also allowing them to pay the social network to get their open position in front of more candidates. Today TechCrunch spotted… Read More
Oryx Vision has created a “coherent optical radar system,” according to CEO Rani Wellingstein, that improves the depth perception of autonomous vehicles. The Israel-based company has emerged from stealth after Series A fundraising and is positioning itself as a competitor to lidar systems.
Wellingstein pointed out that traditional lidar detects light with photoelectric sensors… Read More
As AI and machine learning mature and manifest their potential to take on complicated tasks, we’ve become somewhat expectant that robots can succeed where humans have failed — namely, in putting aside personal biases when making decisions. But like all disruptive technologies, machine learning has its own set of unexpected challenges. Read More
Ever since I saw Disney’s Smart House in 1999, I’ve dreamed of a home that cleans itself and cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner. We’re not there yet, but Apple’s HomeKit and Home app gets us (me) a bit closer to that dream. Apple is racing against Amazon and Google to try to get the masses to adopt the smart home. Unlike Amazon and Google, Apple isn’t manufacturing… Read More
Vine may survive after all. Twitter is currently vetting multiple term sheets from companies offering to buy Vine, and hopes to make a deal soon, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. After announcing its plan to shut down Vine last month, Twitter received a large number of bids, including several from Asia. It’s now working to decide who should run the short-form video app. While… Read More
The race for self-driving autos is heating up; undercover startup Zoox is fetching a value of $1.5 billion even before unveiling their first product.
TechCrunch has confirmed that the company recently raised $50 million from Hong Kong-based hedge fund Composite Capital. The round was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and comes just months after $200 million in funding raised at a $1… Read More
Monitoring used to be a relatively simple matter. Most companies had a fixed number of applications to monitor. These were usually delivered on the web and lived for a number of years on a fairly fixed number of servers.
Today’s environment is far more varied and complex, and New Relic made a series of announcements today designed to help customers deal with new ways of delivering… Read More
Within days of Pokémon GO’s launch, the fans made it clear: They wanted more Pokémon in the game. Maybe they’d already caught everything around them. Maybe their favorite just wasn’t in there yet. Either way, they wanted more. Good news! Newly added code for another batch of Pokémon has just been discovered within the game’s files. Oh, and it looks like Ditto… Read More
Periscope Data, the company that helps data scientists quickly turn their findings into easily digestible visualizations, has confirmed the raise of $25 million in Series B funding.
We originally reported on this funding news last week, and mistakenly named the wrong lead investor. Bessemer led the round, with participation from existing investors, including DFJ, Susa Ventures, Innovation… Read More
Simple Contacts, a new startup launched by a former Techstars entrepreneur-in-residence and the co-founder of the 3D printing startup Sols, is looking to make the process of refilling contacts cheaper and more affordable. The company started from a pain that founder Joel Wish felt all too acutely. A lifetime wearer of contact lenses, Wish was pretty appalled by the cost of getting refills of… Read More
Taking a model that’s worked well in Africa, CaribShopper launched earlier this year with a service that lets shoppers across the island nations of the Caribbean shop online at U.S. stores and buy items in their local currency. In recent months the company has made their ties with similar African-targeted businesses more explicit, partnering with the African company Mall For Africa,… Read More
Stripe, the company that competes against the likes of PayPal by letting businesses add payment services into their apps and websites with a few lines of code, is today launching a new directory that plays into its bigger ambition to position itself as not just a payment tech startup, but a wider platform for business services.
Works With Stripe, as the new directory is called, brings… Read More
Truth be told, I don’t really use convertible laptops. I’ve used many, but the whole articulating hinge idea never resonated with me. However, it is a cool concept and, if done correctly, a nice feature to have, thus complementing the rest of the system. The result is that a student (for example) can with minimal effort turn a work machine into an entertainment center for friends. Read More
If you could print something out aboard the International Space Station, what would it be? That was the question posed to engineers and enthusiasts in the ISS Design Competition, and the winner — a clever and powerful device for launching palm-size satellites — will actually be getting beamed up. Read More
It was really just a matter of time before WiFi startup Luma added Alexa functionality to its bag of tricks. After all, the hardware startup counts Amazon as among its biggest backers – and distributors. The functionality arrives today for the simple WiFi range extenders, bringing with it the ability to “pause the internet” via a voice command when an Echo is hooked up to… Read More
One problem with 360° videos is that you usually see a tripod or a hand holding the camera. One exception is the throwable Panono camera, but obviously you’re limited to how long you can keep a ball hovering. Varavon has another alternative, with a three-axis-stabilized gimbal drone that can film a full 360° sphere without being visible in the picture itself. Read More
Vevo, YouTube’s biggest competitor when it comes to music videos, has today unveiled a new tool that lets users create GIFs from Vevo’s massive video library. With more than 230,000 videos, Vevo offers users a wide variety of content featuring musicians/celebrities. Giphy, the platform for all things GIF, says that 80 percent of its usage is around GIFs featuring celebrities, so… Read More
