If we’re ever to have things like smart contact lenses and permanent brain implants, one of the things we need to figure out is the power problem. Those devices need energy for collecting, processing and especially transmitting data — but that last one might not be a problem anymore, thanks to a new technique called interscatter communication. Read More
The most recent numbers out of analyst firm IDC show a major shakeup in the Chinese smartphone market for Q2. During an especially rough quarter, local handset maker Xiaomi’s shipment dipped significantly from 17.1 to 10.5 million year over year, according to the firm. The 38 percent drop was enough to knock the company down to the fourth position, as Huawei took over the top spot with… Read More
The hit cybersecurity-focused TV show “Mr. Robot,” a psychological thriller popular among the tech crowd for its relatively accurate portrayal of hacking, is now a mobile game. Released by Telltale Games in association with NBCUniversal, and developed by Night School Studio in collaboration with Universal Cable Productions, the game is played through the fictional E-Corp messaging… Read More
We caught wind earlier this week that Cisco was planning a major cost-cutting operation to reduce its costs by around 15% throughout the month. It looks like the first stage of that is a round of cut jobs, with Cisco announcing as part of its earnings report that it will cut up to 5,500 jobs, or 7% of its workforce. The move isn’t unexpected as Cisco works to transition to a new era where… Read More
Ford might be looking to put self-driving cars into service for on-demand taxi scenarios by 2021, but that’s thinking small by Airbus standards – the aircraft manufacturer wants to make autonomous flying taxis a real thing for dense urban areas where traffic congestion is a real and growing problem. You probably won’t be able to hail a flying taxi by 2021, but Airbus wants to… Read More
The latest move by McDonalds to distance itself from its enduring image as a greasy, unhealthy fast food apocalypse is once sure to please fitness-conscious parents: for a limited time, every Happy Meal now comes with a working pedometer. The Step-it is a simple device that comes in six colors that, once activated, tracks a kid’s steps and their general activity level. Steps show on an… Read More
Mathias Biilmann — a former CTO of a firm that built websites for small businesses — says developers have gotten so used to using Github as a central workflow, they expect the entire rest of the developer experience to work the same way. “The way that a front-end developer would work would be to go into a server and change how things were structured, but then Git came in… Read More
Pretty soon, there will be a Marvel universe version of every kind of content, and the next genre up for inclusion is the teen drama. Hulu has placed an order for an adaptation of Runaways, the Marvel Comics series featuring a rag-tag bunch of teenagers trying to be heroes in the face of the ultimate arch-nemeses – their parents. Runways is relatively young by Marvel lore standards… Read More
One of the things I really love about working with startup founders is that they are by nature an optimistic crowd: They set out to build amazing things, change the world and fundamentally shift the way people view things. What they often don’t realize, though, is that in the midst of brutal competition, the path to scale and success is often lined with unexpected co-travelers and events. Read More
Make way for robot! Two driverless buses will be hitting the streets in Helsinki for some real-world testing for the next month or so. The EasyMile minibuses have previously been tested on public roads in Finland and elsewhere, but this is the first time they’ll be mixing it up with everyday traffic there. Read More
Smart home technology offers a lot of potential to make things generally easier, but in practice, it can add a lot of complexity and confusion to a person’s life – especially if you really dive in. Logitech’s new Pop Home Switch tries to reverse the trend, delivery light-switch level simplicity for even the most sophisticated smart home setup. And it succeeds, turning… Read More
A Master’s Thesis by CMU’s Simon Kalouche posits a new form of robotic leg, one designed for maximum range of motion and, more importantly, an easily control method for force reduction. In other words, this is the kind of leg you want on your robot when you send it to Mars. GOAT stands for Gearless Omni-directional Acceleration-vectoring Topology and uses a single motor and… Read More
Come for the Pokémon Go AR, stay for the muzak Pokémon show theme: Gesture control startup Gestigon has created their very first mixed reality experience you can control with your own hands, and their source of inspiration is the Niantic and Nintendo-developed game that everyone’s going crazy for.
The new offering from Gestigon uses its middleware tech combined with a Google… Read More
Over the past year Instagram has been working to reinvigorate the Explore tab, which is the app’s place for showing you personalized content. What started as a simple algorithm to determine photos you may enjoy has evolved into a full-fledged discovery platform to show you photos and videos that will want to make you spend more time in the app.
A major part off this initiative was… Read More
Netflix and an Enseo, the makers of an in-room entertainment platform for the hospitality industry, today announced an expanded agreement that will see the Netflix app offered in more hotel rooms around the world. Through the Enseo system, hotel guests will be able to log in to their Netflix accounts from their rooms, allowing them to stream Netflix’s collection of TV and shows, as well… Read More
While it seems like a new food delivery business launches or gets funded every season in the U.S., several have scaled back, like Sprig, or shut down entirely like Spoonrocket. Among those that have survived, however, are smart sites and apps serving the office-catering corner of the industry, a $20 billion market in the U.S. alone according to research from Technomic. Now, one of the… Read More
The meme of the moment is here and it’s pretty creepy. As our own Romain Dillet points out the title artistry for the Netflix series Stranger Things is surprisingly beautiful and compelling. Now the good folks at design studio Nelson Cash are letting make our own. While many of the titles I’ve seen so far aren’t very scary it’s still fun to make the thing say funny… Read More
Wheelys Café just raised a large chunk of equity funding on Swedish crowdfunding platform FundedByMe to expand to more countries and pour gas on its already explosive growth around the world. The young company has had an illustrious history already, with a stint in Y Combinator, a successful Indiegogo campaign and now a vastly overfunded equity crowdfunding campaign. Read More
The self-driving car market is set to get very big, very fast, on the back of efforts by the likes of Ford, GM and other major car makers. Hyundai is not a company often included in the list of OEMs at the cutting edge of autonomous tech, and the South Korean company could use some friends to help it keep pace with the development of autonomous driving tech. Hyundai is in discussions with… Read More
