Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Your Wrist, whose bold 80+ year mission is to help you carry grocery bags and wear watches like the Luminox XCOR 5261 Chronograph. This unique automatic chronograph from a watchmaker most known for brightly luminous and rugged timepieces, is an homage to spaceflight and looks pretty darn cool. XCOR is a private spaceflight… Read More
Virtual reality offers businesses the ability to see consumer habits in digital environments before committing the resources to actually building out those environments in the real world. For InContext Solutions, a major market opportunity that they’ve been able to isolate is giving retailers the opportunity to test and explore new in-store retail concepts inside virtual reality. Today,… Read More
If you had the chance to watch the second episode of the new season of Black Mirror, you won’t take much convincing when people tell you how important realistic 3D audio is to immersing you in a virtual reality/mixed reality experience. Dysonics is a startup in the VR audio space looking to build the hardware and software workflows that give VR content creators high-fidelity solutions… Read More
Last year, Uber launched UberHEALTH to deliver on-demand wellness pack and optional flu shots. For 2016, it’s doing it again, with Uber for Health, which similarly offers on on-demand “flu-fighting” care pack when you request one in-app, with optional free flu shots for up to 5 people at your location. And this time around, the entire thing is free.
With last year’s… Read More
This week on Technotopia I had the opportunity to speak Laura Dawson, an expert on all things publishing and the future host of a podcast dedicated to ISBNs. To say that she has her finger on the pulse of the publishing world is an understatement.
Dawson knows the ins and outs of the big houses and she understands how they think. Interestingly, almost every publisher is well aware of the… Read More
Venture capital investment has slowed in the third quarter, but estimates reliant on data available at quarters’ end overstate the extent of early stage declines. According to projected funding totals from Crunchbase, early stage investment in U.S. startups held up at historically high levels in the third quarter. Seed, venture capital and strategic investors are on pace to invest… Read More
DARPA’s submarine-hunting robot boat plies the seas off the coast of California. Smooth, grey, and purposeful, truly this vessel resembles other predators of the aquatic world in more than mien. But it turns out it’s also a sweet parasailing platform. Read More
Consumer watchdog groups, CCFC, Public Citizen, and the Center for Digital Democracy, are again targeting the deceptive advertising practices of “influencer marketing” in a new complaint filed with the FTC on Friday. The groups specifically call out Google’s YouTube and YouTube Kids, Disney-owned Maker Studios, Dreamworks’ AwesomenessTV and others, as being involved… Read More
Transit app Moovit and the nonpartisan, nonprofit Rock the Vote organization are working to get you to the right poll on time. On election day — Tuesday, November 8 — Moovit will get you from wherever you are to your correct polling place via public transit, bike sharing services or Uber, whichever works best. When users tap the Directions tab, which usually shows only a… Read More
Research shows the flurry of M&A in the advertising industry is nowhere near slowing. In Q1 2016 alone there were 72 merger and acquisition events among advertising technology, marketing technology and digital media firms. It’s clear much of this deal activity is about industry consolidation to bolster or establish audience, round out tech stack or neutralize potential threats. Read More
Industry, a job site for the hospitality sector, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding to fuel nationwide expansion, as well as product and team growth.
We originally covered Industry last year when it was still in beta in San Diego with about 300 restaurants signed up. Shortly after, they raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding from local San Diego angel investors.
Industry likens itself to… Read More
Lyft is testing out membership passes to let passengers ride for less money in November, the company announced on its blog today. There are two types of passes: a $20 one that guarantees up to 20, $2 Line rides and a $29 one for up to 20 “free” rides. So, if you’re a power Lyft Line rider, $29 up front could save you a ton of money. If you purchase a pass, you also… Read More
PayPal is deepening its relationship with Facebook, and will now become one of the payment options within Messenger, among other integrations. That means customers who shop via the growing number of chatbots from online merchants will be able to transact on Messenger using PayPal’s payment service. In addition, as part of this deal, PayPal says it will make it easier to link your… Read More
The US finance industry might finally be getting its ducks in order to compete with the likes of PayPal-owned social payments platform Venmo. Today bank network operator Early Warning announced it has 19 US financial institutions signed up to a forthcoming payments network called Zelle, due to launch in early 2017. Read More
Henrik Fisker is back with a new electric car company, Fisker, Inc., which has emerged from two years of operating in stealth mode. Now, we have our first teasing look at the new Fisker electric vehicle, thanks to a shadowy image of the car’s front end. The image shows a car that’s quite different looking from the original Karma created by the original Fisker Automotive, which… Read More
Apple has just released iOS 10.1 with a Portrait mode for the iPhone 7 Plus. This feature takes advantage of the two lenses to generate background blur and make your photos look more like photos coming from a DSLR camera. While the feature is still in beta even after the release of iOS 10.1, it already works quite well. Our own Yashad Kulkarni (Romain is writing this) has been playing with… Read More
Apple has just released the first significant update for iOS 10. As expected, the main focus of iOS 10.1 is that insane Portrait mode for the iPhone 7 Plus. The update is rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device into iTunes for a wired update.
If you have an iPhone 7 Plus and can’t wait, navigate to ‘Settings,’ then… Read More
Seeing as how Samsung’s primary S Pen delivery device has been killed off due to a number of exploding devices (you didn’t think we’d be able to get through a Samsung story with mentioning that, did you?), its become a fair bit tougher for fans to get their hands on the company’s stylus (just don’t call it a stylus). While it’s sure not to spark (sorry)… Read More
The New York Times just announced that it has acquired The Wirecutter and its sister publication The Sweethome. The sites were founded by former Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, who The Times says will stay involved in an advisory role. Ben French of The Times’ Beta development team will serve as interim general manager, while Jacqui Cheng and Christopher Mascari will remain on-board as editor… Read More
