It’s 4th of July weekend, and if you’re not off traveling somewhere, hopefully you’re taking a summer trip soon. From Kayak to TripAdvisor, there are plenty of apps that want to help you maximize your vacation planning. We’ve found some others that are worth a mention, too. TechCrunch tested out dozens of travel apps; these are our favorites right now. Hopper Sometimes… Read More
Imagine a future where “moonshots” are part of our everyday reality. Imagine that funding for these innovations comes not from Silicon Valley venture capital, eccentric billionaires or maverick corporations, but instead from the United States government, which has already invested in moonshot technologies and is helping to make them a reality. And that’s just the beginning. Read More
Uber, Twilio, Sendgrid. These are just some of the incredible companies David Cohen invested in with his first fund, Bullet Time Ventures. In our latest interview with Cohen, we reveal some of the strategies behind what is now considered to be one of the best performing funds in history. Portfolio diversification Although a commonly regarded principle of investing, the importance of this… Read More
The Associated Press on Thursday announced that it is now covering Minor League Baseball games nationally using artificial intelligence and software from Automated Insights, and data from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the official statistics provider for Minor League Baseball. Automatically generated stories cover games that AP Sports’ human writers weren’t reporting on or traveling… Read More
At $80, the Jabra Halo Smart is in a bit of a gray area. It’s hardly what the majority of users would call “cheap,” but it still comes in well below other wireless offerings from companies like Jaybird. They’re not fitness buds, nor are they focused on sound or comfort. Jabra, much to its credit, went a different route entirely, eschewing the focuses of most… Read More
With Dalian Wanda Group’s $3.5 billion acquisition of Legendary Entertainment in January, this year’s media and entertainment M&A activity kicked off with a bang that hasn’t slowed down. Comcast’s $3.8 billion acquisition of DreamWorks Animation just three months later continued the trend of content consolidation and IP aggregation. The common denominator is access… Read More
Last Wednesday, Google Capital ventured into the world of investing in publicly traded companies, announcing it has backed Care.com, a platform that connects people with caregivers which went public in early 2014. With Google Capital investing $46.35 million, it became Care.com’s single largest shareholder, according to The New York Times. The deal also sent nine-year-old… Read More
With the incessant talk about unicorns, it’s easy to lose sight of the opposite end of the investment funnel. What feeds the industry is not unicorns, but first venture round companies. Yet raising investments from institutional venture capitalists is becoming increasingly difficult for early-stage entrepreneurs — and it likely won’t ease up through the remainder of 2016. Read More
Welcome to the bot-centric future, which is set to make smartphone users navigate the internet in a chit-chat fashion with a virtual assistant. But “assistant” will soon become too impersonal… Alexa, Siri and others will cross the line from impersonal robots to entities that know our habits, routines, hobbies and interests just as well as, if not better than, our closest… Read More
New-market disruption is a rare phenomenon and usually comes in waves in conjunction with some form of dramatic technological advance. Many disruptive companies (both new and existing) created new markets in periods following the introduction of PCs (Apple, Microsoft), mobile phones (Apple, Samsung) and cloud computing (Facebook, Airbnb). And this is what we are seeing in the enterprise… Read More
The British public recently voted to leave the European Union. Only history will tell whether it was a good decision or not. The immediate issue is… what happens now? Those in financial services and technology firms will have to grapple with the unraveling of treaties that will have a direct impact on their business. But first… what happens next? Read More
Let’s pause on the robots-are-taking-over-our-jobs panic for a minute and take a look at how some robots — telepresence robots, specifically — could be used to give access not only to jobs but to meaningful and rewarding careers for a historically overlooked and excluded population — people with disabilities. Read More
Governor Jerry Brown has recently proposed legislation that would streamline the path for large scale development across California. It could have a huge impact on growing housing supply in San Francisco specifically, which suffers from NIMBYism and a lengthy, local review process for building developers. Read More
The imagination is a powerful thing, and what it creates may in fact be powerful beyond our imagining. That was certainly the case with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, the creation of which is documented in a new short film, “Foreveryone.net,” which was directed by Jessica Yu and is currently showing at the Seattle International Film Festival. Read More
The Pro Football Hall of Fame is a hallowed enough place, being surrounded by bronze busts of the most legendary players that the sport has ever had. But walking through the historic grounds in Canton, Ohio later this month may give you goosebumps for another reason.
That’s because, the Hall of Fame is set to debut its A Game For Life exhibit with 4D holographic representations of… Read More
There are lots of stories about the formation of AWS, but this much we know: 10 years ago, Amazon Web Services, the cloud Infrastructure as a Service arm of Amazon.com, was launched with little fanfare as a side business for Amazon.com. Today, it’s a highly successful company in its own right, riding a remarkable $10 billion run rate. In fact, according to data from Synergy Research, in… Read More
It makes SILICON VALLEY look like C-SPAN–and yet it’s a documentary. Yes, it’s Cryptocurrency!, the show! You already know it’s been the hit of the last half-decade in extreme-nerd, get-rich-quick, and/or libertarian-conspiracist circles. But the story so far may seem incredibly… well… cryptic. So if you’re just tuning in, here’s a timeline to catch you… Read More
A new SEC filing posted Friday gives more clarity about what led up to Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn for over $26 billion. And they prove that Microsoft wasn’t the only prospective buyer. It shows that the talks between LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella began on February 16 of this year, just 12 days after the earnings debacle where LinkedIn shares plummeted. And… Read More
If you’ve ever wished you could roll out a five-mile extension cable for your home phone so you can get your calls when you’re out and about, Invoxia’s new Voice Bridge may be the solution to your globetrotting woes. It’s a virtual phone that connects your landline to your Wi-Fi, making it available via an app. Read More
Today might be conspicuous in the annals of autonomous vehicles for a more serious reason, but another month is over and Google has issued its self-driving car report for June. In it are some interesting details about the system’s ability to detect and avoid cyclists. Read More
