Not every product briefing involves a large hidden speaker trucked in to reproduce plane noise. But Sony clearly very psyched about the noise canceling capabilities of its new wireless headset. In fact, the reps who did presentation even went so far as activating the white noise hum while I was listening to music, in order to affect surprise when I took them off. Fair play.
And indeed, the… Read More
License on Transfer (LOT) Network is looking to make it even easier for smaller startups to sign up for its cross-licensing patent “immunization” organization, which includes members like Google, Netflix and Uber. Between now and March 1, 2017, any new members that join LOT Network that have annual revenues below $5 million won’t have to pay the standard annual membership… Read More
Renoviso thinks it can take the hassle out of home redecorating. Instead of searching for the right contractor, Renoviso determines which local partner can help you on projects like replacing your windows or getting new floors. And the Boston-based startup is now raising $3.5 million in funding to execute their vision. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with existing… Read More
A bunch of new products out of Huawei this morning, as the company kicked the second day of IFA press conferences. In addition to two new entries in the company’s mid-tier Nova line, it also introduced a new 8.4-inch tablet the MediaPad M3.
At the center of the tablet is a 2560 x 1600 2K wide-angle display with a 359PPI pixel density. That’s all wrapped up in a slim full-metal body. Read More
Huawei kicked off its IFA keynote this morning by debuting Nova, a new mid-tier line of handset line offering up solid specs on a budget. The line kicks off with two devices, the simply named Nova and Nova Plus. The two handsets are largely the same, though the Plus, as the name pretty clearly implies, is the larger of the two, at 5.5 inches to the Nova’s five inches. It’s also got… Read More
“Inspired by nature, created for life” is HTC’s customarily grandiose tagline for the admittedly awkwardly named One A9s. All that hyperbole means, essentially, that this is a nice looking handset that can withstand a drop or two. The specs on the other hand are fairly meh. HTC’s new five-inch handset looks a fair deal like its predecessor, which is to say, it looks a… Read More
Only the tightly-lipped team in Cupertino can say for certain, but it sure appears as if Apple is ready to declare war on the headphone jack as we know it. Danish high-end speaker company Libratone is certainly hedging its bets with a newly announced pair of headphone sporting a Lightning adapter – it’s first entry in the space, The upshot here, aside from potential… Read More
Sphero’s BB-8 was arguably the compelling bit of merchandizing, which is, naturally, saying a lot. The latest Star Wars film was, as anticipated, a merch juggernaut, but there was no better bit of serendipity than a startup smartphone-controlled toy maker and the movie’s scene stealing droid. How does one go about improving up such a glorious bit of cross over marketing? Use the… Read More
Steve Jobs’ turtleneck is up for auction, you can now zoom in on Instagram photos, Bill Nye is getting his own talk show on Netflix, Tile has a new slimmer Tile, and you can finally rent Erlich Bachman’s car on Turo. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed a new partnership on stage at Baidu’s annual Baidu World conference today. This partnership with Baidu will see Nvidia and the Chinese tech giant work together on building a comprehensive autonomous driving platform. “We’re going to bring together the technical capabilities, our expertise in AI, and the skills of two… Read More
Baidu received an Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit from the California DMV, the company revealed today. This paves the way for Baidu USA to begin testing its self-driving car technologies on public roads in California, which it says it will do soon. The Baidu autonomous driving research team in the U.S. was announced earlier this year, saying it was targeting reaching a 100-person research… Read More
More than four years later, Kim Dotcom’s legal battles (at least in New Zealand) may be close to an end. His final appeal to avoid extradition to face charges in the U.S started yesterday in Auckland’s High Court, and is expected to last six weeks. And, in a first for any case in New Zealand (and in typical Kim Dotcom fashion), the appeal is being live-streamed. All of the… Read More
Advanced technologies and the rapid adoption of electronic health records are enabling the physical world to merge with the digital, leading to explosive growth in the volume and quality of clinical data. Cognified care is the application of analytics to transform this newly available digitized clinical data into knowledge that can revolutionize healthcare. Read More
The Galaxy Note 7 seems like a pretty decent phone if you like phones literally the size of the galaxy (Brian does) — but be aware that Samsung’s curvy-screened flagship device may be prone to, well, exploding. Fear not, however: Samsung is looking into it. Read More
Q: Gil Penchina (the top-ranked angel on AngelList) said one of the things he has learned about investing is how little control he has on the outcome. Do you feel the same way?
Absolutely. Most investors like to pretend they add a ton of value and expertise but they don’t. I am clear about it. The value I add is in having a good enough relationship with the founder so that when things… Read More
Instacart, the grocery-ordering app, is getting creative about picking, packing and delivering food on-demand. TechCrunch got an aisle-side view of how the company’s people and technology come together on location at Costco in San Francisco. And one thing’s clear: The San Francisco startup has changed grocery stores for good. According to the company’s Chief of Operations… Read More
James Currier focuses on building businesses with network effects, and he builds those businesses by choosing the right people first. Currier started as a schoolboy entrepreneur, selling worms to fishermen at six and later selling boxer shorts in college. After starting his career in venture capital, Currier founded a series of companies and incubators that took advantage of network effects… Read More
Oh yes, young feller, that there Yoga Book sure is something. But why don’t you just set a while an’ listen to the stories of an old blogger. ‘Twas back in the old days — before the millennials took over. That’d be 2009 or so. Longer than most remember these days. Let me ask ya something, m’boy. Ever hear tell of a Courier? Read More
Samsung knows how to throw a party. A really, really weird party. The electronics giant has put on some of the more bizarre events over the past decade, including, memorably, one at IFA 2012 that featured a real-life magician hired by the company to demonstrate just how magical the company’s new phablet really was. This year’s event, focused solely on its new wearable, the Gear… Read More
Last week, Facebook fired all the humans who used to run its trending news, and replaced them with an algorithm meant to capture the most popular stories the web had to offer — in one to two words that often don’t make any sense out of context. How is that going? Well, so far, trending news has viral-ized a fake story about Megyn Kelly quitting Fox News and endorsing Hillary Clinton,… Read More
