Never forget that you’re living in the future. A time when it’s no longer necessary to leave the house in order to refresh your supply of cheesy, salty snack food. Heck, you don’t even have to log onto Amazon. As of today, ordering a box of Cheez-It crackers is as simple as hitting a small, plastic button. The Sunshine Cracker is one of 60 new buttons Amazon has added to its… Read More
Chinese device maker Xiaomi has announced another clutch of mobile hardware, including a concept smartphone developed in collaboration with designer Philippe Starck. Read More
For those doubting that autonomous vehicles are going to be driving alongside humans very soon, consider the first delivery made by Otto while a driver actually left the driver’s seat during the long highway portion of the trip: The Uber-owned self-driving transport truck company made its first delivery recently, moving 50,000 cans of Budweiser from Fort Collins, CO to Colorado… Read More
You can’t keep a good BlackBerry down. BlackBerry is dead, long live BlackBerry. Or, at the very least, you shouldn’t count your BlackBerrys before they’ve hatched. Because this certainly isn’t the first time the company has been declared dead, but through a combination of software offerings, intellectual property and a devoted fanbase, the Canadian smartphone… Read More
We got our first glimpse of Navdy’s smart heads-up display for cars back in 2014, when the company crowdfunded its way to around two and a half million dollars. Two years and around $26 million in venture capital later, it’s here: as of this morning, the Navdy is officially shipping. The idea behind Navdy is simple enough: take the stuff that might usually live on your… Read More
Matt Zeiler grew up in a Canadian farming community — but fast forward a few decades and he’s now running a startup that’s looking to bring the same kinds of visual search tools that Pinterest and Google have to other companies and developers. That company is Clarifai, a New York-based startup that offers developers the ability to tag metadata to photos in such a way that… Read More
If your account gets hacked these days, the first thing you’ll do typically is reset your password, maybe beef up your security settings, and proceed to use the account or app again. But what if hackers get their hands on your fingerprint, iris or other biometric data? You can’t just change your fingerprints or eyes on a whim. That’s where a New York City startup called… Read More
Travel and transportation have always been major focus points for the tech world. Why? Because people will always want to get from points A to B, and to do it faster and cheaper than before. GoEuro — a startup based out of Berlin — is a company to watch here because it straddles both of these industries. Come hear how GoEuro is doing this — and making a success of it… Read More
Red Sift, a new London startup from two ex-Shazamers, is building an ambitious cloud-based and developer platform that wants to enable individuals and businesses to plug in various data sources and make that data actually work for them in a meaningful way. Read More
Controlling your home theater setup with your voice just got a lot easier: Alexa now has an official Logitech Harmony skill, letting you issue simple commands like “Alexa, turn on the TV” or Alexa, turn on Netflix” to start Harmony activities. This is far simpler than existing third-party skills, which can give you Harmony control but involve awkward or complicated phrasing to… Read More
Ok, my headline is a bit provocative, but it’s kind of true. French startup Alan is launching today a brand new full-stack health insurance company in France. Compared to existing products, Alan wants to make the experience much sleeker. Here’s how it works.
The company just raised $13 million (€12 million) from CNP Assurances, Power Financial, Partech Ventures and business angels. Read More
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings isn’t bothered by the idea of a marriage between mobile powerhouse AT&T and HBO’s parent company Time Warner, “As long as HBO’s bits and Netflix’s bits are treated the same [by regulators],” he said. Hastings, who was speaking at the Wall Street Journal Live conference this evening sparred with Comcast over a proposed Time… Read More
Well, now we know why Twitter decided to move its earnings report to before the market opens (when the West Coast will conveniently, largely be asleep).
Bloomberg is reporting that the company may cut up to 8% of its staff, or around 300 people, and that the cuts could be announced as soon as this week. As usual these situations are very dynamic, so all of the above could shake out to be… Read More
Google wants to know everywhere that you’re looking. Today, Eyefluence announced that it has been acquired by Google. The eye-tracking interface startup founded in 2013 had raised $21.6M in funding from investors including Intel Capital, Jazz Venture Partners, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and NHN Investment. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eyefluence shared the… Read More
As hundreds of newly minted Chinese millionaires and billionaires continue their global shopping spree, Ant Finacial Services is expanding its reach to make sure they can buy whatever they want, wherever they want, and however they want. On the stage of today’s Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas, the company announced a slew of partnerships in the U.S., with the payment processor First… Read More
Whenever there’s a shutdown of internet access or restrictions placed on an app, we shake our heads disapprovingly because we know it’s a fundamentally bad idea to do that. But what exactly is the cost of those shutdowns? A new study from the Brookings Institution suggests well over $2 billion over the last year. Read More
The MLB just made it a bit easier to listen to the Indians destroy the Cubs during the World Series. After enabling the skill, subscribers to MLB products just need to tell an Echo to ask MLB to play the Indians. And like that, the Echo turns into your personal Bob Uecker, streaming the play-by-play directly into your room. The app will work the same way during the next season, a MLB… Read More
You know what people love? When you take something familiar and useful and replace it with content “for you” that you actually didn’t ask for. That’s one of the more visible changes in the latest version of Chrome for Android, which swaps out the bookmarks and recently visited items on the new tab page for “suggested articles.” Here’s how to get rid of it. Read More
Last week, I sat down with IPO pro Lise Buyer to talk about the Bay Area ecosystem for a Sirius XM radio show that’s broadcast from Wharton’s San Francisco campus. Buyer was the host and I was the guest, but because the IPO market is top of mind for so many in the startup industry right now, I asked if I could turn the table for a few minutes on Buyer, who is best known for helping… Read More
More than 80 million viewers around the world tuned in to watch the first of three presidential debates. With all the buzz being generated in and around the upcoming elections, no industry is exempt from their impact — Silicon Valley and the tech industry included. The Valley is not sheltered, nor is it immune to national politics — a fact that the Valley used to know. Read More
