It may have just become a little easier to get the blue check mark on Twitter. The company has just announced that they are opening applications to apply for verification on the platform. As a refresher, being verified gives users a blue check mark on their profile to “let people know that an account of public interest is authentic”. Typically, this means celebrities,… Read More
Psshhhewww…Wwooooom…Woooooom….Kkssschhhh…
In the midst of thrashing a virtual lightsaber all around my body with all of the sound effects, it’s a bit hard for me to ignore the increasingly apparent point that nostalgia will play a huge role in getting people hooked on AR and VR.
Pokémon GO has already ignited this huge feverish debate around the future of… Read More
The international shipping industry is under siege by the tech world. Fleet and Flexport are just a few of the companies hopping into the space, but entrant Grabr is taking a different approach with a marketplace powered by individuals.
The company is launching a peer-to-peer marketplace via web and iOS app, letting travelers bid on orders to deliver items that are difficult to ship… Read More
“Well you’re in your little room,” wrote the bard. “And you’re working on something good. But if it’s really good you’re gonna need a bigger room.” With the Yamaha LL-TA you can have just that. The $1,600 Yamaha LL-TA – the TA stands for Transacoustic – is an acoustic guitar with a built-in effects processor and actuator that augments… Read More
Uber’s drive to get closer to core components of its business continues as the company has secured a partnership with DigitalGlobe, a satellite imaging company that also provides images to Apple, Google and the U.S. government. DigitalGlobe’s high res satellite pics can provide extremely high levels of detail, revealing the changing topography of the modern city with a clarity… Read More
Slack, the popular messaging app for co-workers to chat, share files and distract each other with GIFs, has taken some major steps forward to establish itself as a wider productivity platform. As of today, there are 600 apps integrated with the service, letting you bring in content from other services and share it with other users by way of simple, short codes. And now the company is… Read More
Even though Nokia acquired Withings for $190 million, the French company is going forward with its product releases. At CES, Withings announced the $100 Withings Thermo, a smart thermometer to track your fever. The device is now launching in Apple stores, on App Read More
Spark Capital, one of the biggest and most successful early-stage and growth-stage VC firms based in New York, is bringing on a new partner in the form of Rachel Horwitz, veteran at both Twitter Comms and Facebook Comms. She will be the first marketing/comms partner at the firm. Horwitz spent nearly five years at Twitter as Communications Director, then took that experience to… Read More
Sitting in a Tel Aviv office, my interviewee borrowed my iPhone for a simple demo. Inside two minutes, he was displaying my key strokes and web browsing onto a big screen in the meeting room, entirely remotely. I’d heard Israel was a hotbed of security startups — but this was a pretty impressive demo.
Now that startup, Skycure, has secured a $16.5 million funding round for its… Read More
To predict and prevent fraud online even more quickly than cybercriminals adopt new tactics, Sift Science has raised $30 million in a Series C round of venture funding in a round led by Insight Venture Partners. According to the U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2015 annual report, reported internet crimes alone, ranging from personal and corporate data breaches to credit card… Read More
A new startup called Civic, launching today, wants to help Americans stop becoming victims of identity theft. The company is aiming to topple similar identity protection services like LifeLock by focusing on a broader market than just credit monitoring, while also allowing people to respond to fraud alerts in real-time in order to prevent the fraud from actually taking place. Today,… Read More
Duolingo is probably the most popular mobile education app, but until now, the company’s focus has been solely on language learning. Today, the company is expanding its reach by launching Tinycards for iOS, its first app that can be used for learning virtually anything that involves memorization: vocabulary, equations, history facts and every Pokémon’s name and stats (I’m… Read More
Doppler Labs, the makers of the Here Active Listening system and the Here One headphones, has today announced the close of a $24 million follow-on Series B funding round led by Peter Chernin and The Chernin Group. New investors also contributed, including Kevin Efrusy, David Geffen, Dan Gilbert, Henry Kravis and Anton Levy, among others.
Doppler Labs has been on the scene since 2014, slowly… Read More
Two weeks ago, Twitter was reportedly in talks with the NBA to acquire digital rights to stream hoops action. Well, those discussions materialized quicker than a LeBron James-led fast break. Recode is reporting that Twitter will exclusively stream two live and original NBA programs weekly, beginning next season. The social media network will also double the amount of NBA game highlights… Read More
Apple l’avait déjà annoncé lors de sa conférence d’inauguration de la WWDC en juin, mais maintenant c’est officiel. Apple Pay est désormais disponible pour les clients des banques partenaires possédant une carte Visa ou MasterCard. Malheureusement, rares sont ceux qui vont pouvoir s’en servir dès aujourd’hui.
Parmi les grandes banques françaises, seul le Read More
When the partners at Bloomberg Beta — a $75 million seed investment fund — sit down to review how they’re doing, they say they don’t first look at the valuation of their portfolio. Instead, they first take a look at how the founders in the fund are grading them as investors and partners. While paper valuations are always important for any firm, a key metric Bloomberg… Read More
You’re a diehard New York Yankees’ fan stuck deep in Connecticut without access to a car or reliable public transportation, but the launch of startup Rally means you no longer have to give up hope of making the trip to Fenway Park for the Yankees-Boston Red Sox series August 9. Numaan Akram, CEO of Rally, invited me to a screen-sharing session Monday to demonstrate how quick and… Read More
Something as indispensable as hearing aids — which cost upwards of $5,000 (and that’s just for the basics) — should be as accessible and, frankly, affordable as a smartphone. Considering how many people have hearing loss, or are at risk, it’s astonishing to see that innovation in this space has been painfully stagnant. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Read More
It’s not quite Steve Jobs or The Social Network. Think Friends With Benefits. The writing team behind that 2011 Justin Timberlake/Mila Kunis vehicle has been given the early thumbs-up from Warner Bros. for their upcoming Tinder-centric romantic comedy.
The studio is developing the apparently Comic Book Guy-inspired script, Worst Tinder Date Ever, penned by romantic comedy vets Keith… Read More
Amazon this morning is introducing a new way to read short-form content on Kindle devices and in the Kindle app with the launch of “Singles Classics.” The service will bring articles, stories and essays from well-known authors and top periodicals – many available in digital format for the first time. The articles will be priced at 99 cents each, with writers and… Read More
