The team is now embarking on its most ambitious project yet, a wide-reaching virtual reality network called Project Sansar that is, in many ways, aiming to become a new layer of reality that gives individuals and businesses a space to experiment with VR environments for their first time. I had the chance to sit down for a demo of Sansar with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg this past week and… Read More
At a time when Silicon Valley is so focused on software, Tony reminds us that being truly revolutionary requires a combination of both great hardware and great software. A few years ago, it was the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and Macs. Now it’s products like Nest and cars where entrepreneurs are marrying innovative hardware with innovative software. Read More
Spain-based security startup CounterCraft, founded last September, has closed a €1 million ($1.1M) seed round to accelerate development of a b2b security decoy technology designed to engage hackers and keep them harmlessly occupied while also providing tools to analyze what’s going on. Read More
Starting in August, Mozilla’s Firefox will block Flash content that “is not essential to the user experience,” the organization announced today.
With this move, Mozilla is following Google’s lead, which made a similar decision last year and now plans to almost completely block Flash content in its Chrome browser.
Not too long ago, Flash was one of the fundamental… Read More
China has issued a temporary ban on the highway testing of autonomous cars. According to Bloomberg, the country’s auto regulators have warned automakers to keep their autonomous vehicle testing off highways until official rules are in place.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is working with law enforcement to create uniform regulations for self-driving testing. Read More
That didn’t take long. Just a day after releasing the third iOS 10 developer beta, the second public beta of iOS 10 is now available to download. The second public beta of macOS Sierra was also released today. And of course, you won't have to pay $99 a year for a developer account. But things are still rough at this stage so I wouldn’t recommend installing it on your main… Read More
Right after launching in France, Apple Pay is now available in Hong Kong as well. As usual, only a few partnering banks are part of the launch, but the company expects to roll out support for more cards and stores over the coming months. Read More
George Matus has been building drones since he was 11 years old. At 18, he has built the world’s fastest production drone, Teal. The 730 gram craft will be able to takeoff at 70mph and has hit speeds of close to 85mph in testing. Drone racing is taking off (literally), and Matus wants to be on the forefront of the consumerization of drone technology. Besides being fast, his new drone… Read More
Experiencing the world’s art just got a little easier, thanks to Google’s newly launched Arts & Culture application which puts works of art from over a thousand museums across 70 countries into the palm of your hand. But the app goes beyond offering only static images and text – instead, it now offers tools to search art works by any keyword, browse by color, as well as… Read More
This is Jessica Singleton’s last week as chief digital officer of the City of New York. Singleton became the city’s digital director in January 2014, then took on an expanded role as chief digital officer last year — at the time, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration said she would “encourage public participation in City-led technology initiatives, focus on… Read More
Teams and artists aren’t able to manage their businesses effectively, e.g. they cannot move prices in real-time in response to changes in supply and demand (closed ticketing systems don’t expose the APIs necessary for real-time pricing, a practice that is standard in other industries). It’s no wonder that when you add all this up, legacy ticketing is one of the most… Read More
Nutrition has been something of a missing link in the world of heath wearables. At best, some devices feature a system that requires users to manually enter what they’ve eaten over the course of a day. On a whole, however, what we eat doesn’t get nearly as much scrutiny as the ways in which we attempt to burn it off. STYR Labs is offering an interesting take on issue,… Read More
Google today announced the public beta launch of its Cloud Natural Language API, a new service that gives developers access to Google-powered sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and syntax analysis. This new API joins Google’s other pre-trained machine-learning APIs like the Cloud Speech API, which is now also available in public beta, the Vision API and the Translate API. The new… Read More
The learn to code space is packed with ideas. But when it comes to what children want to do online, towering over everything else is the build-it-yourself Microsoft-owned Minecraft platform. All lesser virtual, creative playgrounds are overshadowed by this pixellated silhouette. Read More
Yahoo’s first diversity report in 2014 was a wake-up call for Margenett Moore-Roberts. At the time, she was working heads-down as senior director of Yahoo’s video advertising strategy and facilitating $50 million a year in revenue.
“I hadn’t looked up until our diversity report was published,” Moore-Roberts tells me. “I was surprised, to say the least. I… Read More
Microsoft this morning announced an expansion to its Office 365 suite with the debut of a new service called Bookings, which will allow customers to schedule appointments with a business using online software. In addition to connecting businesses and customers without the need for a phone call, Bookings will also manage other aspects to appointment management, including sending out… Read More
Back in 2006, Google opened its first owned and operated data center in The Dalles, Oregon, and starting today, you’ll be able to host your Google Cloud Platform applications in Oregon, too. The company today announced the launch of its first West Coast region (formally known under the poetic name of ‘us-west1’). The company first detailed its plans for opening this new region… Read More
Early demos of VR headsets talked a lot about the potential for designers working in virtual space with live 3D models, but DesignSpace, a prototype originally created at the 2015 AEC Hackathon in London, is one of the first real pieces of software that looks like it can deliver. The prototype by Thomas Van Bouwel uses the HTC Vive to let designers, architects and urban planners immerse… Read More
HomeTouch, the UK home care marketplace, has picked up £700,000 in new funding in a round led by Rocket Internet’s venture arm Global Founders Capital (GFC). Previous backer Passion Capital also participated, along with various angels, while I’m told the new capital will be used to invest in performance marketing and further product development. Read More
Dreamit Ventures’ accelerator has ditched the demo day, according to Chief Innovation Officer Steve Barsh. That’s not the only change the early-stage venture firm and accelerator has made of late.
Today, Dreamit unveiled a list of 25 new health and edtech startups launching from its revamped programs. A full list of those companies provided by Dreamit follows at the end of this… Read More
