Microsoft introduced Microsoft Teams today to much fanfare and hoopla — as only Microsoft can seem to do these days. But when you take a close look at today’s announcement, what have you really got here — a 10-year-old idea on how to communicate and collaborate in the enterprise with a distinctly Microsoft twist. As I wrote previously about Slack and more recently Workplace… Read More
Now that the insane, oh-my-god-it’s-everywhere hype cycle has tapered off a bit for Pokémon GO, Niantic gets to crack the classic startup conundrum: How the heck do they keep people coming back? The company is about to take its first swing at the problem by way of daily bonuses. The more regularly you play, the more you’re rewarded. Read More
Facebook had a wildly successful Q3, earning $7.01 billion in revenue and $1.09 EPS. That’s off of from 1.79 billion monthly users, up 16% year-over-year, and growing 4.67% this quarter, speeding up from 3.63% last quarter. Daily active users rose to 1.18 from 1.13 billion last quarter, and up 17% year-over-year. Facebook now has 1.66 billion mobile MAUs up 5.7% from 1.57 billion in… Read More
Apple released a new video ad just in time for Game 7 of the World Series (that’s baseball, and it’s not really a “world” cup). And this is a good one.
Like previous ads, Apple is focusing on just one new feature in the iPhone 7. All of my friends have been asking me what’s new in the iPhone 7. After so many iterations, it’s hard to keep up with new… Read More
The Kenyan software company Ushahidi has launched a campaign to observe the upcoming U.S. elections. The operation, called USA Election Monitor, will track voting irregularities reported via website, email, Twitter and SMS and post accounts to an online interactive map. “It’s a citizen-inspired, citizen-led election deployment,” Ushahidi’s Executive Director Daudi… Read More
The global video game industry is exploding in popularity. Companies such as ESPN, Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have formed their own e-sports divisions in recent months, and the gaming market exceeds $90 billion, up 9 percent in the last year. It is bigger than the movie industry and predicted to expand with new emerging platforms like VR. Greylock investment partner Josh Elman… Read More
If you want to add a head-up display (HUD) to your car, you’ve certainly got choices. In addition to Navdy and its Chinese clone Roav, Carrobot launched in October to bring its eye-level interface to cars that don’t have the tech built in. Carrobot distinguishes itself from its competitors, most notably Navdy and Exploride, by having full voice control for all functions as well as… Read More
When we last left Polish smart lighting company Silvair they were working on a way to create a Bluetooth mesh network between you, your kettle, your lightbulbs, and countless other devices in the home. After two years of work the company has perfected their systems and are now offering occupancy sensing, beacons, customer tracking and lighting to enterprise customers using a unique set of… Read More
Crosley has teamed up with renowned leather maker Moore & Giles to release a limited edition of its high-end C10 turntable. The special version of the C10 features a leather slip mat plus a layer of leather on top of the base. And it’s extremely limited. In fact, only 40 were made, and TechCrunch was able to get its hands on the very first unit. From a technical perspective, this… Read More
A controversial legislative framework that will strengthen and set in stone mass surveillance capabilities in the U.K. — including authorizing state agents to hack devices/services en masse and requiring ISPs to retain a year’s worth of website access logs on all users — looks set to come into force later this year, after the last opportunity to amend the draft passed by… Read More
Twitch, the Amazon-owned video streaming platform which is today used by over 2 million broadcasters, announced today its plans to begin selling video ads in its partners’ live streams. These ads will roll out this week, and will be delivered through Twitch’s new SureStream video technology platform, which also offers smoother and more reliable streams, including ads, the… Read More
In light of recent news that Wells Fargo fraudulently opened thousands of customer accounts, it’s not hard to sympathize with peoples’ mistrust of Wall Street, especially for groups that have already been tough for banks to win over. Read More
Microsoft Teams throws a lot of you, right out of the gate. That’s because competitors like Slack already have a sizable head start on Microsoft’s workplace collaboration tool. More to the point, though, is that, while the company is late to the party, it’s got about as good a business suite infrastructure as anyone can ask for, from Office 365 to Skype. In a lot of ways,… Read More
Gfycat, fresh off its $10 million seed round and debut of its first mobile app for texting and editing its own flavor of GIFs, announced today that it’s acquiring the Mac desktop application GIF Brewery in an effort at expanding its GIF creation capabilities. The GIF Brewery app, which lets users create, edit and share GIFs from their Mac, has seen over 110,000 downloads to date, and… Read More
Howard Lerman will often jump in front of a white board in front of you in a room and talk about how he wants to turn Yext into one of the next huge enterprise platform plays following SAP and IBM. That’s probably not too outlandish: His company, Yext, currently serves as probably the largest database of location data for businesses and other venues around the world. It’s… Read More
No, the little feature that tells you your Uber driver is 2 minutes away (but feels like it’s more like 10 minutes) isn’t going to change. But Uber is rolling out what it hopes is a more organized app to help you book your ride quicker. Uber added a ride selection with its first major redesign in 2012. Back then it was simply a choice of UberX and UberXL. But many versions later… Read More
TechCrunch is pleased to bring you the Pitch@Palace 6.0 Demo Day, live from St. James’s Palace, starting at 5:30pm BST, 9:30am PT. Established by The Duke of York, Pitch@Palace offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to present their business in front of an audience of influencers. For those of you following along, the 12 entrepreneurs pitching in today’s event were selected… Read More
Hey, New Yorkers, I’m starting up my series of micro-meetups in New York with a special tasting at the Van Brunt Stillhouse. The founder, Daric Schlesselman, is a friend of TC and showed off his wares at the last New York Disrupt and he’s offering us a special tasting on Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 7:00 PM. It’s way down in Red Hook, so put on your hiking shoes and… Read More
Paris-based DJiT, the French startup behind the popular DJ app edjing and more recently a hardware device called Mixfader, has raised a further $2.6 million. Read More
Sling TV, Dish’s over-the-top service aimed at cord cutters, is after your kids. By that I mean the company is rolling out a new on-demand channel that caters to children, or, more accurately, the parents of young children looking for easier access to kid-friendly entertainment from the streaming service. Called, Sling Kids, the channel offers new on-demand content as part of its… Read More
