Dunkers, a new game by Colin Lane (known for Wrassling and other fun sporty games), has racked up 1 million downloads since it was released last week. The success in large part is thanks to heavy featuring from Apple; it has been featured more than 150 times worldwide. Currently in iTunes, it sits at No. 1 sports app, No. 4 sports game, No. 8 free game and No. 34 free app overall. The game… Read More
Deal site Groupon saw its shares rising today in after-hours trading, following a better-than-expected second quarter earnings report.
Analysts expected the Chicago-based company to report negative earnings per share of $0.02 on revenue on a non-GAAP basis, and $713.8 million in revenue, according to Estimize data.
But Groupon beat Wall Street revenue expectations with second… Read More
Key escrow — the process of keeping a set of keys for yourself “just in case” — has always been the U.S. government’s modus operandi when it comes to security. From the disastrous Clipper chip to today, the government has always wanted a back door into encryption and security. That plan backfired for the TSA.
The TSA, as you’ll remember, offers a set of… Read More
How would you describe Facebook? Historically, it’s been the social hub of billions of users looking to stay connected with friends and family. Yet in recent years, it’s become more difficult to describe Facebook in a few words — it’s a place for businesses to share info with consumers, advertisers to market to target audiences, media to deliver news and a place to… Read More
Nearly two years ago LivBlends was a Y Combinator smoothie delivery startup. The company has evolved since then, raised $3.8 million in seed from various investors and switched its name to Replenish. It’s also moved away from delivery and into manufacturing a line of Keurig-like self-cleaning smoothie machines. Replenish is still in the testing phase of the product, but… Read More
It would have been a nice piece of information to share during yesterday’s earnings report, but Tim Cook and Co. were clearly too preoccupied with service revenues and R&D. And hey, no better way to kick off a midweek meeting than a little positive news — particularly if you can carry some of yesterday’s expectation-beating positivity into the following day to help… Read More
Facebook wants to be known as a place to search for mentions of current news in hopes of drawing more public chatter that normally ends up on Twitter. While Facebook stumbled with its natural language Graph Search, it refocused on keywords, and is now seeing 2 billion searches per day of its 2.5 trillion posts. That’s compared to 1.5 billion searches per day in July 2015, and 1 billion… Read More
Hyperloop One is today announcing the opening of its first manufacturing plant.
Called Hyperloop One Metalworks, the 105,000 square-foot building in North Las Vegas will be the new professional home of many of the company’s 170 employees, including engineers, machinists and welders. These folks will build and test a number of components for the DevLoop, a full-system prototype of the… Read More
Action-camera maker GoPro reported second quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Shares quickly rose 10 percent in after-hours trading, but then were down 3 percent as investors dug through the earnings release. And then they were back up about 3 percent. The company posted revenue of $220.7 million, above analyst forecasts of $194 million. Adjusted earnings per share was negative… Read More
Coming off an all-time high stock price of $123.34, Facebook in Q2 2016 smashed earnings again. The social network continued steady growth just slightly slower at 3.63% compared to last quarter’s 3.77%, adding 60 million monthly users this quarter to reach 1.71 billion. It scored $6.44 billion in revenue and $0.97 EPS, blowing past estimates of $6.02 billion and $0.82 EPS.
This is… Read More
Mercedez-Benz has been putting QR codes on the B-pillars and inside the fuel door of new cars since November 2013, and those have provided a way for first responders and emergency personnel to quickly get detailed model info about any Mercedes-Benz vehicle involved in an accident using the Rescue Assist mobile app. Now, an update brings 3D imagery, as well as augmented reality, to the… Read More
Nearly two months ago, the Tor Project promised a full investigation into the sexual assault allegations that led to the resignation of one of its lead developers, Jacob Appelbaum. That investigation is now complete, Tor’s executive director Shari Steele announced today, and the Tor Project is implementing new policies and procedures to prevent future incidents.
Although rumors about… Read More
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wants to steal some of the Democratic Party’s spotlight during the Democratic Convention with yet another puzzling declaration. At a press conference in Florida today, Trump invited Russia (yes, the entire country of Russia) to hack into Hillary Clinton’s inbox and release “the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” Read More
Spotify late last year turned its recommendation engine to concerts, suggesting nearby shows based on the listening habits of its users. Today, Pandora announced a similar move, aided by Ticketfly, which Pandora acquired last year. Now, the two are working together to bring personalized concert suggestions to Pandora users, also based on listening behavior. When an artist creates an event… Read More
A San Francisco startup that many people assumed was toast, Good Eggs, has raised $15 million in a new round of venture funding led by Index Ventures to expand its online, organic grocery business first in the San Francisco Bay Area, and later across the U.S. In recent years, Good Eggs tried to ramp up its eco- and farm-friendly grocery business only to face logistics problems, high costs… Read More
The team behind LaunchKit, a set of tools that helps developers launch their apps, is heading to Google and joining the Developer Product Group. It doesn’t look like LaunchKit’s products are moving over to Google, so the team decided to open-source its products and make them available on GitHub. LaunchKit’s hosted services will be available for the next 12 months. After… Read More
On July 19, members of the Northwest Automotive Press Association got together in Portland, Oregon, to drive 14 fuel-efficient and high-tech vehicles and compare them head to head. The overall winner was the 2017 Chevy Volt, which uses electricity plus a small gasoline generator engine and carries a price tag around $40,000. (No, Tesla did not send a vehicle to be tested.) The… Read More
Every decade, a set of major forces work together to change the way we think about “applications.” Until now, those changes were principally evolutions of software programming, networked communications and user interactions. Today, data and machine learning/artificial intelligence are combining with software and cloud infrastructure to become a new platform. Read More
Ford is working with MIT on a research project that will deploy a new fleet of on-demand electric shuttles that can ferry students from class-to-class both on campus and on city roads at MIT’s Cambridge, Mass. location. Students can hail one of three electric shuttles using an app on their smartphone, and a driver will arrive quickly to pick them up. The research projects hopes to shed… Read More
Funding a project on Kickstarter is like placing a bet – will the project ever work? Will it ship? Or will you just be out a chunk of change? That said, the crowdfunding platform has enabled a number of companies to get off the ground, including those that range from gadgets and electronics to toys and home goods, among other things. Today, Amazon announced it’s teaming up with… Read More
