There’s always been an ongoing conversation amongst successful tech entrepreneurs about how to “give back.” Not everyone can afford to found an entire hospital, and yet many feel a desire to do something more than move on to the next startup. What probably needs to change is not so much the conversation around the “big exit” but the “conversation”… Read More
Two years ago Flickr rolled out Marketplace, a photo licensing service that was meant to help Flickr users get paid by big websites and media properties that wanted to use that user’s photos.
As of today, Flickr Marketplace is going away. It’ll take a few months for Flickr to wind things down, and Flickr notes that any royalties due to users will be paid, but the program is… Read More
Aria Systems is bringing together the chocolate of usage- and subscription-based revenue opportunities with the peanut butter of increasingly connected automotive systems. The resulting candy (to complete this metaphor) that launched this week is Aria for Connected Vehicles. This is a cloud-based monetization platform for connected cars, on-demand transportation, telematics and more.… Read More
You know how sometimes you look at a piece of research and think, “I suppose it’s an interesting technical problem, but isn’t teaching an AI to hunt and kill humans a pursuit fundamentally dangerous to the continued existence of mankind?” This is one of those times. Read More
Whenever you see wide shots of a TV audience, you see huge contraptions with cameras on them, enabling TV folks to create fantastic swooping shots. If you want some of that in your life, Joby can help with its Action Jib kit. It’s great to get close to the action and to make the people around you think you’ve lost your mind by sporting the most outrageous selfie stick ever. Read More
The sparsely populated Spratly Islands are quickly becoming the center of one of the most contentious international disputes between world powers since the fall of the Soviet Union. Alarmingly, the use of cyber attacks suggests we might already be in the midst of a new Cold War playing out in cyberspace — where America’s advantage is not as clear as it is with conventional armies… Read More
Whether you’re a high school student or an NFL team owner, everybody texts. ReplyBuy, a finalist in the 1st and Future competition, wants to use the text message to get you tickets for sporting events. 1st and Future is a sports-centric startup competition produced as a joint effort between the NFL, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and TechCrunch. The current version… Read More
Things are looking up for adtech companies on Wall Street — or at least for one of them. The Trade Desk debuted on NASDAQ today at a price of $28.75 per share, up nearly 60 percent from its IPO price of $18. And while there wasn’t a dramatic pop, it continued to climb and closed the day at $30.10 per share. That’s a good start, particularly considering that adtech companies… Read More
It’s common practice these days for companies that hold significant amounts of user data to publish transparency reports. Google, Facebook, Dropbox and Slack all put out their numbers on a regular basis, breaking down government requests for user data by country and type (platforms typically receive requests for law enforcement investigations, as well as copyright takedowns and other… Read More
A few weeks ago, True Ventures closed its newest, early-stage fund with $310 million, which is just a slight step up from its last, $295 million fund, despite some enormous wins like Fitbit, whose first check came from True. (As you likely recall, the wearable device maker staged a highly successful public offering last year.) We weren’t able to catch up with firm co-founders Phil… Read More
Bots are a useful tool on Wikipedia: they identify and undo vandalism, add links and perform other tedious tasks set by their human masters. But even these automated helpers come into conflict, reverting and re-reverting each other on the same topic — sometimes for years. Read More
Waze’s engaged community is definitely its most powerful asset, and now the company wants to broaden its community to include tunnel operators who want to fill in the current gaps in wireless navigation tech. These roadways have typically been frustrating to all manner of wireless communication, posing a problem for everything from AM radio to modern GPS navigation. It’s that… Read More
Virtual reality needs content if it’s ever going to take off in a meaningful way. And while thus far that’s largely been focused on gaming, we’re finally starting to see studios make a major push into the space. What shape that content will ultimately take is another question entirely. Certainly comedy and news aren’t the first two genres that immediately spring to… Read More
Apple is rumored to be in talks to acquire McLaren, but that’s not all. While the New York Times was digging on the McLaren story, they also found out that Apple is also talking with Lit Motors for a potential acquisition. Now you might be thinking “Lit who?” While Lit Motors is nowhere as big as McLaren, it’s another interesting company in the automotive space. The… Read More
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative just announced a new program informally called Chan Zuckerberg Science to invest $3 billion over the next decade to help cure, prevent, or manage all disease. The money comes from the $45 billion organization Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan started last year to advance human potential and equality. The project will bring together teams of scientists… Read More
Disrupt SF had an amazing lineup of speakers from Marc Andreessen to Steph Curry. Weren’t able to catch every second? The TechCrunch social team has compiled the 25 best quotes from the event. Read More
If you go by the latest headlines, the data scientist is the most coveted and scarce enterprise commodity on the employment market. But you could just as easily argue that it’s a trendy title that has not nearly lived up to the hype — and could eventually be automated out of a job. Read More
Yahoo View, the company’s recently launched gambit to go after cord cutters by offering free video content from Hulu, is now available on mobile. Yahoo has just debuted an iOS version of the mobile TV service, which will soon be followed by launches on Android and the mobile web, the company says. In case you missed it earlier, Yahoo View was developed in partnership with Hulu to bring… Read More
Several folks started noticing self-driving Uber cars in downtown San Francisco yesterday, fueling speculation the ridesharing company could soon be deploying autonomous vehicles for commercial use right where it all started in the Bay Area. Mattermark editor in chief Alex Wilhelm snapped a picture of a white Ford Fusion stopped at the intersection of Montgomery and Pacific. And, as first… Read More
