In the 80s, there were dozens of 1-900 hotlines that anyone could call to chat about a certain topic. These ranged from phone sex lines to WWF chats to fan hotlines for stars like The New Kids On The Block and Hulk Hogan. Chatrooms eventually ended this lucrative industry. Until now.
Unmute, an app that lets users make and listen in on live phone calls, is today unveiling v2 of the product… Read More
Most of my analogies revolve around sports. The concept of “attribution” in business is similar to giving credit to a player for assisting another player in achieving an objective. The purpose of this post is to explain the analogous concept of multi-channel attribution in digital marketing: That is, which channels should get rewarded when a user clicks through to buy something. Read More
Kyna and Conan Fong were at dinner trying to convince their father, who ran a medical practice, to try something different than just keeping paper records. There’s a good reason for that — they’re slow, they’re hard to transfer and share (often requiring paper delivery or faxes), and there’s a lot of information that can be lost along the way. But despite that being… Read More
During what was likely the first presidential campaign fundraiser held at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, campaigners made their case for Hillary Clinton as the cyber candidate.
Last night, Jeff Moss, the founder of Black Hat, and Jake Braun, a former Obama campaign staffer and security consultant to the Department of Homeland Security, pitched Clinton to the security pros… Read More
This might sound like inside baseball, but I’ve been using Ulysses for all my writing for a few months now. It’s a rock-solid, well-designed writing app for iOS and macOS. And now, the app lets you publish on any WordPress website with a native export screen, among other things. Read More
Sling TV has long been a viable option for sports fans who want to cut the cord with traditional pay television, thanks to its streams of popular channels providing sports coverage, like ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, TBS and more. Now, you can add NFL Network and NFL RedZone to that mix, thanks to a newly announced deal between Sling TV parent company Dish Network and the NFL. Read More
TechCrunch is going to be in Los Angeles next week and we want you to come hang out with us. We’ll be hosting a mini meet-up next Wednesday, August 10, from 6-8 p.m. at WeWork’s brand spankin’ new Culver City location. Come hang out with some of your favorite TechCrunch writers and the sexy TC video team for a good time over drinks and apps to discuss tech, news and your… Read More
Apple released a brand-new ad just in time for the Olympics. The video is all about diversity and happiness, and it features many different photos and short clips of people smiling and enjoying life. Maya Angelou is reading her own poem “Human Family” to narrate the ad.
Apple will air it for the first time during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies tomorrow. Compared to previous… Read More
Reputation management startup BrandYourself has raised another $2 million. It’s been two years since the company raised $3.3 million in Series A funding. Since then, co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron said BrandYourself has grown to an 80-person team, and it’s become profitable. (Ambron also pitched BrandYourself on Shark Tank last year, though he ended up turning down funding… Read More
In an attempt to better understand neuromuscular conditions like ALS, engineers at MIT have developed a quarter-sized chip housing a muscle strip and some motor neurons. The setup is designed to recreate the neuromuscular junction, the bit of chemical synapse where neurons and muscle fibers meet. The team has developed a method for creating muscle response by shining a light onto the neuron… Read More
There are signs that a growing number of Brits are feeling overwhelmed by the neverending demands of digital technology, with many web users attempting to reset the balance between their online and offline lives by taking a temporary break from connected devices. Read More
Indonesia-based Go-Jek, the motorbike taxis on-demand company that competes with Uber and Grab, has confirmed that it has raised $550 million new funding and hinted that it may expand overseas. Read More
Twitter today is debuting a new advertising format that will encourage its users to tweet more often, while talking about an advertiser’s brand. With the new ads, businesses and brands will now be able to post a call-to-action that offers some sort of exclusive content that can only be unlocked with a tweet – like the ability to preview the trailer from a new film, gain access to… Read More
Where were you in 1993 and 1994? I was probably playing Aladdin, and then The Lion King (yes for the entire two years), two surprisingly great 16-bit platformers created by Disney and Virgin Games. Now you can relive them in all their SNES splinter on your Windows, Mac or Linux PC thanks to retro digital game seller GOG. Oh, and you can play The Jungle Book, too, but I have no nostalgic… Read More
Password management is one of the key defences — or key weaknesses — when it comes to protecting your data and identity online, and today Dashlane — the digital wallet and password manager startup — announced that it has teamed up with Google to develop another route to trying to fix that. The two have unveiled OpenYOLO — not this YOLO, but short for “you… Read More
Back in November 2015, Apple released its music streaming service for Android phones as a beta. 9 months later, the app is now official a version 1.0. And yet, it only has an average rating of 3.3 stars on the Play Store. Read More
The thing that sticks out at you most about the second member of the Roomba 900 series is the robotic vacuum’s price. At $700, it’s not cheap, really, but it’s at least slightly more within reach than its $900 predecessor, the 980 – a move that comes as a handful of manufacturers have undercut the Massachusetts-based company in the space it helped pioneer.
The 960… Read More
A new study by car maker Nissan predicts the UK will have more electric vehicle charging locations than gas stations by 2020. It’s a bold prediction to estimate that EV chargers will outnumber places to gas up in just four short years, but Nissan is counting on both a continued decline in the number of operational gas stations, as well as new charge points coming online. The attrition… Read More
Formlabs is shaping up to be something of a rare bright spot in a world of desktop 3D printers. While plenty of other devices have come and gone, failing to live up to the promise of consumer electronics’ next big thing, the company’s pro-level technology has continued to pique the interest of hobbyists and prototypers alike. A couple of months after picking up an online 3D… Read More
In a beacon of hope for onlooking founders, Y Combinator reject and network analytics startup Kentik Technologies, locked down a $23 million Series B this morning. Let’s be honest — most of us don’t know anything about network infrastructure. Fortunately for most of us, we can afford not to know. For internet service providers and companies making use of a large number of… Read More
