Planning a wedding is right up there with moving and job hunting as one of the most stressful things you’ll do in life. I would know. I’m getting married in 10 days. So when Y Combinator startup Joy approached me about their intelligent wedding planner startup I was already in the eye of the storm using the most popular wedding site in the U.S. TheKnot.com. Both sites – and… Read More
Interested in a lactose-free, animal-free, nut-free nutritional bar made with soy protein, algal flour, and some sort of sugar made from beets? If that sounds delicious to you (???), then you’ll be glad to hear that the Soylent bar is now shipping. The latest in the growing lineup of meal replacement products from the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup aiming to change the way people… Read More
Ford outlined a few of the ways it’s aiming to ship driverless cars by 2021, and part of the plan involves acquisitions. CEO Mark Fields revealed at a press event in Palo Alto today that the automaker acquired SAIPS, an Israeli company focusing on machine learning and computer vision. It’s also partnering exclusively with Nirenberg Neuroscience, to bring more “humanlike… Read More
Ford says it’s going to deliver self-driving cars by 2021 – and these will ship in volume, and will also lack steering wheels, brake or gas pedals, offering full Level 4 self-driving features which don’t require a human driver at all, the company announced at a press conference in Palo Alto today. The car maker says that it has held off making any announcements about when… Read More
Looking to participate in the hackathon at Disrupt SF 2016, but missed out on the first round of tickets? You’re in luck!
Today, we’re opening up the second round of hackathon tickets, so everyone who wants to spend a grueling, fun-filled weekend building something great should head on over to ticketing page and grab your free hackathon tickets before they’re gone. Read More
Intel’s new Joule maker board is designed to provide a platform for makers to create powerful computer vision products, and “seamlessly transition from prototype to at-scale robotics, machine vision,” drone and other products, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich explained on stage today at Intel’s annual developer conference. Case-in-point, PivotHead’s use of the the… Read More
Windows 10 users will be able to dive into mixed reality starting next year, with an update planned that can let any “mainstream” Windows 10 PC run the Windows Holographic shell the company first revealed in January 2015. The update will allow users to multi-task in mixed reality environments, which combine traditional 2D Windows 10 apps with immersive, 3D graphical environments.… Read More
A startup called Simbi has raised $1.2 million in seed funding to popularize its marketplace where people can barter skills and services online. Greylock Discovery fund, Crunchfund and Ranch Ventures invested in the round along with Y Combinator. The company is part of Y Combinator’s current batch. Founder and CEO Kjerstin “KJ” Erickson said her five-person team intends to… Read More
No big surprise here: Tsu, a social network that worked around the App Store’s rules on pay-per-installs, incentivized its users to create content, rewarded people for signing up friends, and got banned from Facebook for spamming, has now shut down. Yes, “pay you to post” and “pay you to friend” turns out to be an unsustainable business model, after all.… Read More
All right, startup fans in the U.K. and across Europe. We’re thrilled to announce that TechCrunch Disrupt is once again headed across the pond for Disrupt London 2016, and you are cordially invited to join us. The festivities kick off December 3-4 with the hackathon, followed by Disrupt on December 5-6. We had so much fun last year that we’re excited to be returning to the… Read More
Likability, intuition, and a strong work ethic is a potent combination in any business, and many in Silicon Valley think seed-stage investors Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson have all three in spades. They “complement each other,” says investor Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, who invested in the Series A round of DoorDash, the restaurant delivery company, after they seeded… Read More
Intel moved full-throttle into the VR space with the announcement of an all-in-one virtual reality headset alongside a new Intel Merged Reality platform at the Intel Developers Forum. An announcer teased the dramatic reveal with the phrase, “what if you could move freely without any restriction on what you do next?” Project Alloy is completely wireless, something that… Read More
Apple CEO Tim Cook is currently visiting China. According to Reuters, he used this opportunity to announce that the company would build a new research & development center in China before the end of the year. Other than that, we don’t know much. It’s unclear what engineers in China will work on, but it’s safe to say that they might be better positioned to work on… Read More
Microsoft wants everyone to know the joy that is low latency wireless gaming peripheral connections. The company is making the Xbox Wireless connection tech it uses between Xbox One and official controllers available to PC OEMs and accessory makers, starting with Lenovo’s new Cylon-like gaming rigs. Xbox One controllers can be used with PCs now, but you need a dongle to make them talk… Read More
Microsoft’s answer to Steam’s Early Access is coming to Windows 10. Xbox Game Preview will be available on Microsoft’s desktop OS beginning soon, staring with Rockfish’s Everspace later this year. Game Preview gives players a chance to try games while they’re still cooking, as work-in-progress titles complete with warts. It’s not something everyone enjoys,… Read More
Google is making a number of announcements around its Cloud Platform today. Most of these focus on its various cloud database services, but the company is also making a major update to its low-cost Nearline cloud storage service for cold data, making its disk volumes faster, and allowing its users to bring their own encryption keys to Cloud Storage. The overall message Google is clearly… Read More
Bugs be gone! That’s the philosophy behind Appknox, a mobile security startup from Singapore which has raised $640,000 in a pre-Series A funding round. Read More
Anonymity has proven a dangerous path for startups like Secret, so Yik Yak is pushing a soft pivot towards connection with people close by. You can still share anonymous quips on the sagging college app, but now it’s forcing you to add a handle and photo. Then it wants you to post status updates about what you’re doing that day, and browse and contact nearby Yakkers. Changing course… Read More
A startup called Polybit has introduced what it’s calling the Standard Library of the Internet in open beta, a resource to make back-end coding easy for developers, even beginners. The Standard Library, or the “stdlib” as the startup is calling it, allows developers to upload the functions they write to the cloud, and make their “microservices” or logic portable,… Read More
