Slowly but surely, the Zepp Labs is taking on every sport known to humankind. And the latest is a biggie. The company is set to start shipping Zepp Play Soccer tomorrow here in the States (hence the name, footy enthusiasts). As with the rest of the Northern California startup’s offerings (which also include baseball/softball, golf and tennis at present), the soccer pack is built around… Read More
Typing on small screens can still be challenging, but today’s keyboard apps still focus on text entry over speech, despite the advances in voice-based computing and the increasing accuracy of speech recognition technology. Baidu wants to change that, with a new keyboard app called TalkType that prioritizes voice input over typing. The app was developed by Baidu Research, the Silicon… Read More
It’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop – the effect of an impact has similar negative effects on people and on the sensitive electronic parts of robots. A new research project from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab could help lessen the damaging effects of sudden physical shocks, for both humans and robots alike. The new technique devised by the… Read More
Time was an egg or a sack of flour could be used as a perfectly serviceable substitute for a child (or so decades of sitcoms have taught me). Much of the press coverage around the Kirobo Mini positions the four-inch robot as an adorable attempt to address a population with a declining birth rate – with accompanying images and video “tug[ging] at maternal… Read More
Alexa is getting better, the Echo is getting smaller and Amazon will stop at nothing to bring its smart assistant into your home, even if that means issuing a second generation of its Dot hardware a mere months after the original, at virtually half the price. After all, Amazon knows when it’s got a winner on its hands, and, as Google and (likely) Apple rush to bring their first offering… Read More
Egnyte announced today that moving forward, it would be using Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud partner. While it would continue to support other cloud vendors like market leader AWS, it likely means that the company sees the best way to succeed inside the Azure ecosystem.
In an interesting twist, instead of making the announcement last week at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, Egnyte… Read More
Tesla is making progress in increasing the pace of its vehicle deliveries, as well as its vehicle production, according to a press release issued by the company on Sunday. The electric car maker delivered around 24,500 cars in its fiscal Q3 this year, including 15,800 Model S and 8,700 Model X. That’s a 70 percent jump from Q2’s 14,402 total deliveries, and Tesla says… Read More
Shopify has acquired Waterloo-based Boltmade, the company announced, bringing the digital consulting and product development firm in-house. The acquisition will add Boltmade’s 21-person team, which mostly consists of engineers and designers, to its operations in Waterloo, focusing on Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus is the e-commerce provider’s “white glove” offering, with… Read More
Facebook Marketplace lets you browse a relevancy-sorted feed of things to buy from people who live nearby, and quickly list your own stuff for sale. Integration with Facebook Messenger lets you haggle or arrange a meet-up, and you know more about who you’re dealing with than on anonymous sites like Craigslist thanks to Facebook’s profiles. Marketplace is launching today in the US,… Read More
Anki is adding large semi-trucks to its Overdrive game. This is clearly an attempt to breathe new life into the platform. And it works. The Supertrucks as they’re called add a new type of game mode and a bit of variety to the race car game. This is the first major update to Anki’s second generation game. The company launched its first game called Drive in 2013 and followed that up… Read More
Companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google continue to compete fiercely in the area of cloud services for consumers, developers and enterprises, and today Microsoft made its latest moves to lay out its bid to lead the race, while also launching a new mission to position itself as the cloud provider you can trust. Microsoft announced it would build its first Azure data center in France… Read More
Messaging platform Telegram is powering up on the chatbot front, with the launch of what it dubs a “bot-powered gaming platform” — in a bid to try to drive more engagement via addictive new features. Read More
Google is set to announce a bunch of new products tomorrow. And the star of the show is supposed to be the long-rumored Google Pixel. 9to5Google has spotted not one but two accidental leaks that match up and look legit. The Google Pixel will be Google’s flagship Android phone, and here’s what we know so far. It looks like Google shared some details about the new phones with… Read More
Facebook is seeking to fill in some of the gaps in the reach of its messaging app empire, announcing today a new standalone version of its Messenger app, Messenger Lite, specifically designed for older Android devices with limited storage and for slower, data-constrained Internet connections. Read More
“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future. Nor need the pleasures of the table be banished. That gloomy Utopia of tabloid meals need never be invaded. The new foods will be practically indistinguishable from the… Read More
When you take your next shower, the water flowing from the faucet may just be recycled. That’s the vision fueling Hamwells, a Netherlands-based startup that launched in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt London 2015. In the Battlefield, the company presented their e-shower with a re-circulation mode that recycles each drop of water 7 times, significantly reducing the waste… Read More
Digital cameras today tend to fall under one of two categories: SLR or mirrorless. What’s the difference? Why does it matter? To find out, let’s take a quick trip through the history of the medium. It turns out that many of the changes to how cameras work have been attempts to solve a simple problem: how do you show what’s in front of the lens to both the user and… Read More
Ransomware has already managed to carve itself a niche as one of the main cybersecurity threats of 2016. As individuals, organizations and government agencies, we’re taking precautionary steps to protect ourselves against malware that can encrypt files beyond our reach. What we’re ignoring though, is the next wave of ransomware attacks, which will not target our files, but rather… Read More
In the United States, we are on the eve of potentially electing our first female president. Yet as much progress as we’ve made, we still have a long way to go to achieve gender parity – especially in business. It’s likely that a woman reading this today will soon be passed over for a deserved promotion or miss out on funding for a game-changing idea. The state of women in… Read More
Certain universities are known to produce a high number of funded startup founders. These schools tend to share certain qualities: prestige, large STEM programs, research prowess and proximity to concentrations of investor capital. At CrunchBase, we set out to quantify the comparative track records of such institutions. We started with a list of top U.S. research universities. Using… Read More
