The electric vehicle bandwagon has long left the station thanks to Tesla, but Maserati still wants to get on board. The high-end carmaker might be behind the curve when it comes to announcing its electric vehicle plans, but it’s looking like the Fiat-Chrysler-owned company will manage to ship a fully electric car by 2020, with something to show off in the 2019 timeframe. The Maserati… Read More
Where there is wireless connectivity, there is a way to improve lives. That’s why countless mobile-for-development programs designed to address health, education and economic issues have been flooding Africa. Hailed as the “mobile continent,” Africa has generated $150 billion through the mobile ecosystem. But not every tech-for-good initiative can be M-PESA, the mobile… Read More
Exploding phones are really bad PR. But when one of the post-recall replacement reportedly starts to spontaneously smoke inside a customer’s pocket on a plane, you’ve got a veritable code red disaster on your hands. In light of that most recent story, customers are becoming understandably wary about their Galaxy Note 7 devices, even as Samsung cheerily noted high retention… Read More
Self-driving cars of the future won’t need to be configured on the inside the way they are now, since things like steering columns won’t be required. Electric drive trains will also help maximize available interior space, so it makes sense that cars will look dramatically different inside and out when the two things combine, as they seem inevitably on track to do. The new… Read More
On the 26th day of the 10th month of the year, Microsoft will be showcasing some big Windows 10 news at an event in New York City. The company just sent out invites, and while they don’t reveal a heck of a lot about what’s going down (just a lot of backwards text), we hear that the company will be launching a new Surface device at the event — exactly what remains to be seen.… Read More
650 million people use Facebook Events — 100 million every day — but it’s a smaller sect of hardcore extroverts who discover these parties and meetups, then invite everyone else. Now Facebook is giving its most outgoing users a dedicated app for browsing and searching for stuff going on nearby. And thanks to the Facebook Events app’s ability to pull in calendars from… Read More
Yesterday, Facebook revealed that it’s working on a standalone headset with inside-out tracking, which would mean that a user could jump into a full virtual reality experience with only the head-mounted display itself, without needing cumbersome cables attached to a big, expensive PC – and without base stations, too, to bounce IR signals off the headset and help it determine the… Read More
Ride-sharing apps’ rumble with regulation keeps on clocking up the mileage… Both Uber and Lyft have been hit with a court injunction banning their activity in Philadelphia, following complaints by the local taxi industry. Read More
Well, great news for all those media publishers investing in video in hopes of better catering to young adults: a new study released this week from the Pew Research Center found that younger people are actually more interested in reading the news than watching it. Meanwhile, it’s the older generation who prefers watching the news instead of reading, Pew found. This… Read More
Poland can do some cool stuff. To wit: this cool bike path in a town called Pruszków. The path is made of a light-emitting material that charges in the sun and can glow for up to 10 hours in the dark, bathing cyclists in a calming blue glow. The company that made it, TPA sp. z o.o is an engineering firm focused on future tech. They expect this sort of road to be useful in larger projects… Read More
New rumors swirl in our Media 2.0 world about one massive potential tantalizing and game-changing deal – Disney buying behemoth SVOD service Netflix. That makes sense – and may happen – but Apple (or even Amazon) make even more sense. Each has the means (Disney’s market cap is about 3X Netflix’s, Apple’s is a whopping 12X, and Amazon’s is 8X). In… Read More
If you’re a maker, a hustler, a shaker, or a serial entrepreneur you probably make a lot of websites. There are a number of tools you can use including Bootstrap (please stop using Bootstrap), Squarespace, and a few cool WordPress plugins. Now there’s also Tilda.
Tilda is basically an easy-to-use responsive page builder that costs $15 a month for a standard landing page. Nikita… Read More
Check I’m Here, a platform that helps colleges and universities track student engagement with campus activities, has raised a million dollars in a Series A round of funding to continue to grow its service. Now live at more than 80 institutions and reaching 400,000 students across 30 states and three countries, Check I’m Here’s advantage is that it’s not just… Read More
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo held a press conference earlier this week aimed at building a bridge (and tunnel) to the mid-21st century. The governor’s ambitious and controversial plan highlighted a series of initiatives designed to reduce highway congestion and cut down on emissions.
The initiatives also include tunnel barriers designed to protect against floods, and bridge… Read More
Meet Side, a French startup that until recently was called WeSlash. Side is a marketplace for short-term jobs. Companies may need a few extra hands for a few days or weeks, and students may want to work on the side to make a bit of money or gain experience — Side fills this need and raised $1.5 million (€1.3 million) from Connect Ventures, Fly Ventures, Kima Ventures and… Read More
When Salesforce purchased Quip last summer for $750 million, it seemed on its face to be an unusual acquisition for the cloud CRM company. Salesforce tends to concentrate on more vertical targets. In fact, at a press conference this week at Dreamforce, Salesforce president, vice chairman and COO — yes, he has all those titles — said when asked about the company’s… Read More
In an effort to attract more users to its streaming music service, Google today has teamed up with fitness app Runtastic to offer the app’s users a variety of new workout playlists, including songs for running that are over 130 beats per minute, that are powered by its music service. The songs are available for free within the app, in the 60 countries where Google Play Music is… Read More
We’re excited to announce that Azmat Yusuf, the Founder of the incredibly useful Citymapper urban transit app, will be joining us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in London on December 5-6. Yusuf previously worked at Google, as well as in the venture capital and equities fields for international banks. He started the Citymapper app in 2011, originally as a guide for Londoners to navigate… Read More
There’s was a brief moment during this week’s Google hardware event when everyone following online had a momentary panic attack. The words “Verizon exclusive” were floated and those watching at home understandably tensed up. Carrier exclusives are, of course, ultimately rough for the consumer. Thankfully, however, the contract averse will be able to pick an unlocked… Read More
Google’s new hardware is getting a Google-owned physical retail experience – temporarily. The search giant is opening a popup shop in Google at 96 Sprint St. in New York beginning on October 20 called “Made by Google.” This is the same tagline the tech titan uses to market its own-brand hardware, which now includes the new PIxel, Pixel XL, Daydream View, Google Home… Read More
