For many businesses, ownership of the Internet of Things lies within a number of C-suite titles. But IoT demands an interdisciplinary approach, whether the desired outcome is to streamline internal processes, introduce new customer experiences or uncover new revenue. This requires collaboration among multiple business units, some of which traditionally work independently from each other. Read More
Pokemon Go is exploding. It’s a pop culture phenomenon unlike anything we’ve seen before. Think I’m crazy? If you live in anything resembling a major city, go stop by a mildly popular landmark — if you don’t see a dozen people staring at their phone and flinging Poké balls, you have your eyes shut. Already into Pokémon Go? Want to get better, faster? I’ve… Read More
The zero marginal cost of information is turning everything upside down. Albert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures asserts in our latest interview, “We are just at the beginning of this inversion.” Although the changes this inversion is bringing to many associated industries like traditional publishers, crowdfunding sites, and biotech companies are still in their infancy,… Read More
Mobile events and conferences company DoubleDutch announced today that it will be laying off 55 of its employees as a part of a company-wide restructuring. The company, founded in 2011, has raised over $78 million in funding to power its mobile tools which allow event organizers to create dedicated app experiences that give them the ability to easily share information with attendees… Read More
Universal Avenue, the Stockholm-headquartered startup that lets companies access a local sales force on demand, has closed a deal of its own.
The company has raised $10 million in fresh Series A funding, adding to the $5 million “extension” to its seed round a little under a year ago and bringing total funding to $17 million. Read More
A NASA camera on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a rare lunar transit across the face of a sunlit Earth. The images, which feature a fully lit far side of the moon, were captured between July 4 at 11:50 pm ET and July 5 at 3:18 am ET. This was actually the second time a lunar photobomb was photographed by DSCOVR; the first occurred about a year ago, on… Read More
Tesla is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported, for a possible securities law breach. What’s at issue is whether the electric vehicle company should have notified shareholders immediately following a fatal accident on May 7 that killed a Tesla Model S owner who was using Autopilot at the time of the crash. A spokesperson… Read More
How do you rescue a brand like Ashley Madison after it becomes synonymous with infidelity, poor security, a fateful hack, a massive breach of privacy and at least two suicides? That was the challenge thrown in the lap of the company’s new CEO and president. The new leadership team’s answer is a complete overhaul of the brand and what it stands for — but will it be enough? Read More
Sharing economy startups like Airbnb and Uber have gone nuclear to defend their business model, suing city governments or shuttering their services entirely when they don’t get their way. Airbnb recently sued the City of San Francisco over legislation that would require Airbnb to boot hosts off its platform if they don’t register with the city. Uber and Lyft haven’t had… Read More
A Federal Appeals Court this month issued a ruling that makes password-sharing a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That has given many Americans pause, as sharing passwords to online services like Netflix and HBO GO is a fairly common activity these days — and now, thanks to the verdict, one that breaks federal law. But don’t panic just yet: Netflix is still… Read More
If you haven’t seen it already, you will soon when you are walking down the street. Every person you pass who is fervently looking at their phone is likely playing the No. 1 game in the country right now: Pokémon Go. You might think it’s popular because of the brand. Nintendo, which refused to make a Pokémon game for the longest time on a smartphone, has finally caved and brought… Read More
Last week the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion that an employee acted “without authorization” when he used a former co-worker’s login (with their permission) to gain access to “computer data owned by the former employer.” This led to the court upholding a decision that the employee violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a federal… Read More
The Walt Disney Co. is kicking off the third session of its corporate accelerator this week, and revealed 9 new companies admitted to the program. A full list follows at the end of this post.
The companies are developing everything from cinematic virtual reality and holographic content, to robots with human-like facial expressions.
Because alumni of the Disney Accelerator have scored big… Read More
Catching them all could be risky. Four men in O’Fallon, Missouri, have been arrested on charges of first-degree robbery and armed criminal action after having used the popular gaming app Pokémon Go to target other users, lure them into isolated areas and rob them. The four teens were taken into custody on Sunday morning following a call to 911, according to the O’Fallon… Read More
People are fascinated by the relationship between free will and a pre-destined path. This relationship has never been more interesting than in today’s digital world, where the ultimate goal of most companies is to personalize their web content based on your demographic data and known preferences. Read More
When you use Google to sign into Pokémon Go, as so many of you have already, the popular game for some reason grants itself (for some users, anyway) the highest possible level of access to your Google account, meaning it can read your email, location history, pretty much everything. Why does it need this, and why aren’t users told? Also this is definitely the last Poképost for a while. Read More
Pokémon Go is off to a big start in the U.S., but just how big? The company hasn’t yet revealed any official numbers, but we have estimates to provide an idea of the scope of downloads and revenue the mobile game is generating. App analytics company SensorTower used its predictive model of the App Store and Google Play, which takes hundreds of thousands of data points from its partners… Read More
The Facebook event for a San Francisco Pokémon Go crawl on Wednesday has 3,600 people confirmed in attendance, with another 18K “interested” in the event. The event is set to start as a stroll through the city, before culminating in a bar crawl. It’ll be one hell of an overspill at even the biggest bars, however, if even a fraction of the respondents turn up. Read More
In the past two years, more than 2 million Chevrolet cars with 4G LTE data connections have been sold, and, according to GM, those connections have chewed through 3 million gigabytes of data. Now each of those bytes will cost half as much, because Chevrolet is dropping the price of its data by 50 percent. Where a 1 GB per month plan used to cost $20, now it’s $10. Annual plans are… Read More
Built.io’s Flow is a drag-and-drop tool for building enterprise integrations. It’s a bit of a mix of Yahoo Pipes (R.I.P.) and IFTTT for connecting services like Salesforce and Marketo to help automate the sales process in an organization, for example. Today, the company is launching a major update of Flow that will make it easier for businesses to build more powerful… Read More
