The race to create a new, 21st Century form of bank continues. In Europe, Holvi (coming out of Finland) was desktop-first and hasn’t come to the UK. It also hasn’t been focussed on being a hub for third party services, so therefore behaving more like a platform. In the US there is Seed.co (a YCombinator startup) but they haven’t launched internationally yet. So with the… Read More
Gridstore, a company that focuses on building software and data center appliances for Windows Hyper V-based clouds, today announced that it has acquired DCHQ, a service that helps enterprises move their applications to any cloud or container infrastructure (with a specific focus on Java-based applications). With this acquisition, Gridstore is changing its name to HyperGrid and the old… Read More
For better or worse, preaching the gospel of your candidate no longer requires leaving the couch. As anyone who’s cracked open a social media account over the past year can corroborate, the platforms are lousy with campaign slogans, incriminating links and, um, spirited discussions. In the lead up to next week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Hillary… Read More
While many designers and engineers find success with 3D-printing parts in plastic for prototyping and low-volume production, producing parts out of metal using similar technology has recently led to the creation of some of the most exciting 3D-printed parts in memory. Read More
In the ever accelerating social media feedback loops of the modern Internet age, ‘don’t feed the trolls’ is a phrase that appears to have fallen out of fashion, favor and collective memory. Read More
In a massive shake up just ahead of Monday’s convention in Philadelphia, Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced today that she will be stepping down from her role as the head of the Democratic National Committee after the end of the event. The move comes as calls for her to resign have increased in the wake of a massive release of DNC staff member emails by Wikileaks.… Read More
Robin Smith is the co-founder CEO of ORIG3N, a regenerative medical company that has crowdsourced blood samples to create the world’s biggest and most diverse bio-repository. According to Smith, regenerative medicine is the next big thing in medical science — so disruptive, in fact, that he says it’s akin to the Internet in 1993. No wonder, then, that ORIG3N has already… Read More
Democratic governments are slow-moving creatures — as they should be. Social stability generally requires that change be evolutionary, not revolutionary, lest the changes imposed set off turmoil that could cause much more harm than the hoped-for good. While that principle works fine for most aspects of society, it’s woefully inadequate when it comes to implementing technology for… Read More
According to reports that are starting to trickle in, Yahoo’s board has accepted the terms of the Verizon offer we reported last week. The core assets of the company that started life in Jerry Yang and David Filo’s 1994 Stanford dorm room as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” — and at one point was one of the highest valued properties on… Read More
Computers are complicated, and one thing drivers don’t need in cars is complication. The safe operation of big, heavy, motor-powered vehicles that can travel as high speed relies heavily on an attentive driver paying attention to the control systems they use to make the car go, as well as to the world around them. Computers, whatever other advantages they have, require attention and… Read More
The hits just keep on coming for Prisma. Just over a month after launching on iOS and almost immediately capturing the imagination of the Instagramming masses in the process, AI-fueled photo filtering app is Prisma is now live for all Android users. That’s a mere five days after the app first launched in beta on Google’s mobile operating system, through a limited invite… Read More
Their products help us learn, communicate and navigate the world. The companies behind these innovations are battling for the future of computing. Each one is defending their core businesses while placing bets on the future. Their tangled business relationships help mask the underlying strategies that drive them; however, Apple’s strategy to stifle Google’s chief revenue source… Read More
In the wee hours of the morning, the Solar Impulse 2 took from Cairo, embarking on the last leg of its round-the-world journey. The 17th and final part of the trip is set to end in Abu Dhabi, where it first set off from in March 2015. The last leg of the journey is anticipated to take around 48 hours, at which point pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg will have flown a total of… Read More
We all have a soft spot for Prisma, the app that turns smartphone photos into stylized artwork. But the reverse process — transforming artwork into pictures — is no less fascinating. And it’s not far from becoming real, researchers in the Netherlands said.
A team of four neuroscientists at Radboud University is working on a model for inverting face sketches to synthesize… Read More
Neil Young’s music service is apparently down, but not out. In a note posted to Pono’s front page, the hi-res music provider announced that it’ll be going offline for for “several weeks,” due to the recent acquisition of Omnifone, which has been the driving force behind the service’s infrastructure. The company’s purchase has led Pono to seek a new… Read More
Sometimes I think about replacing the table in my office with a sofa and a box of tissues. I’m a lawyer, but sometimes I feel like a therapist. When startup founders sit down with me to hash out equity splits and trust and commitment issues, their tempers sometimes flare. Uncomfortable silences ensue. Feelings get hurt, and tears sometimes fall. Read More
That Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot you backed last year – you remember the one, right? Jonah Ray, Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt all signed on and you threw your screen like an angry Fry from Futurama meme (helping the project reach $5.7 million on the crowdfunding service). It’s finally got a home. The 14 new episodes of the show will be, perhaps unsurprisingly, arriving… Read More
It was just a matter of time, really. With the new slate of Star Wars films on an annual schedule, and drones invading the skies all around us, the timing was right for this kind of synergistic force push. RC toy maker Propel is launching a quartet of drones modeled on some familiar modes of transportation from a galaxy far, far away. Launching this fall/winter, the Lucasfilm-approved… Read More
I ran across a fascinating piece by Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures this week, provocatively titled: “Why Startup Technical Diligence Is A Waste Of Time.” You should go read it, but its central thesis is simple: “in today’s world of SaaS tools, APIs, and cloud infrastructure … technical resources are rarely the cause of success or the reason for failure.” Is… Read More
At Bloomberg’s recent technology confab in San Francisco, Marc Andreessen offered a vision for entrepreneurship, defining it as the ability to see how the world potentially could be, then inventing what is needed to change it. Herein lies the dilemma for Silicon Valley: The same questions that spur its entrepreneurs to remake the world are often the same questions that lead it into conflict. Read More
