Twitter is beginning to devote resources toward building out a dedicated VR/AR-focused team. The social media company has hired former Apple designer Alessandro Sabatelli to lead the initiative as Twitter’s Director of VR and AR, Will Mason over at UploadVR reports. Update: Twitter has confirmed the hire and said that the Augmented Reality team will be housed within the… Read More
Visiongain, an analysis firm based in the U.K., released a report this month listing the top 20 connected car companies, which includes all the usual suspects, such as Volvo, Ford and Honda. Tesla and Toyota were also among the top 10 automotive manufacturers in the connected car market, which Visiongain projects to be worth $35.7 billion in 2016 alone.
Toyota and Tesla also made the MIT… Read More
Twitter — hot on the heels of the launch of its app for influencers, Twitter Engage — has today released yet another standalone application: Twitter Dashboard. The new service, available on both web and mobile, is aimed at businesses that want to use Twitter to connect with their customers. The app offers a suite of tools, including customized feeds of tweets, tools for… Read More
Evernote is an indispensible tool for many, and the company is always working on making it more so — “but that requires a significant investment of energy, time, and money,” it writes in a new blog post. You know what that means: price hikes. Read More
Today, NASA successfully completed a full-duration qualification ground test of the booster that is designed to lift the most powerful rocket in the world. This particular test was a cold motor test used to provide data on how the rocket motor operates at the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range. NASA cooled the motor over the last several weeks to get temperatures down to… Read More
Connectivity, education, and entrepreneurship — these are the principles of Hillary Clinton’s technology platform, unveiled today at a Denver startup incubator. The decision to announce her technology imperatives outside of Silicon Valley may seem strange, but it represents one of the platform objectives: to democratize tech industry growth across the country, rather than just… Read More
Pinterest today has a new tool for finding things that you might want to buy — and they’ll be things you see in the real world. Here’s how it will work: go to Pinterest search and tap the visual search button, point your camera at anything you’re interested in, and it’ll automatically do a visual search for everything you see. Pinterest will populate the photo with… Read More
Facebook colonized the internet with its Like button that sees 10 billion views per day around the web. Now it’s getting a makeover for mobile alongside the launch of two new Save and Share Chrome extensions that let you capture content from any site. Together, these updates should help fill the News Feed with news stories from around the web, and turn Facebook into a more… Read More
Flip, a startup that helps tenants find someone to take over their lease, is announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding. The New York City-based company has created a marketplace where lease holders can post apartments that they need to rent out, and where pre-screened applicants can look at housing before it hits the rental market. (Depending on how badly they need to get out… Read More
Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the launch of its first region in India. Formally known as the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region, this new AWS region is the company’s sixth in Asia Pacific. With this, AWS now operates 13 regions, with a total of 35 availability zones. AWS previously announced its plans for opening this new region a year ago. The company says it has more than… Read More
LINE Corp., makers of a messaging app that’s gone mainstream in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, has set a price range for an initial public offering on the Tokyo and New York Stock exchanges in July. Its shares would be priced between 2,700 and 3,700 yen, or about $26.50-$31.50 per share. As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today, at those prices, LINE’s IPO could raise up… Read More
The folks at Bose are putting a DIY spin on the sometimes staid world for Bluetooth speakers, with a kit designed to show little ones the big wonders of electronics. The Speaker Cube is the first entry in the company’s new BOSEbuild line, featuring all the pieces and step-by-step instructions for building a Bluetooth speaker.
The Cube also features a number of customizable elements… Read More
Looks like it won’t be too much longer until U.S. users can get their grubby paws on Motorola’s forthcoming fourth-gen Moto G. Announced last month right around Google I/O, the baseline G4 will be arriving on Amazon, Best Buy (which will be offering up a $50 gift card with the purchase) and Walmart.com, and various other stateside retailers (including Motorola’s own site)… Read More
Joanne Carter worked for McDonald’s for 15 years. But she always prefered foie gras to cheeseburgers. Her new job as co-founder and CEO of For True Foodies Only — a bootstrapped company that’s about to launch an app for chefs and foodies — is probably more consistent with her culinary inclination. A native of Toronto, Canada, Carter started her career at… Read More
While I absolutely despise most STEM toys I’m going to give Happy Atoms a pass simply because it is aimed at educators and not for the home market. Created by chemistry set maker Thames & Kosmos along with Pittsburgh-based Schell Games, Happy Atoms teaches kids about building molecules using magnetic atoms that connect in “happy” ways. The entire kit comes with… Read More
Facebook is testing a new option designed to highlight the company’s ability to handle person-to-person payments through its Messenger chat application. The company confirmed it has added a new option in its flagship app’s main navigation titled “Send or Request Money.” The feature will move Facebook users into Messenger in order to manage payments, or it sends them… Read More
Dr. Dre may make some of the most popular headphones on the planet but Beats are likely tuned to the way Dre likes to listen to the music – with heavy bass. You are not Dre and your ears and my ears and everyone else’s ears hear a slightly different way. Even your left and right ear have a distinct way of listening to different types of sounds. Even is a new set of earphones… Read More
For nearly 30 years, pundits have predicted that education technology would disrupt higher education. Online courses will reduce costs and create unprecedented access to higher education, so the argument goes. Likewise, adaptive learning will improve — or replace — the art of teaching as the right digital content is delivered at the right time to each individual learner. Read More
Code.org is making some of Disney’s most beloved characters from Frozen and Star Wars a regular part of its core curriculum to its millions of K-5 students. Code.org first introduced Frozen’s Anna and Elsa as part of its Hour of Code campaign in 2014 and Star Wars characters Rey, BB-8, Princess Leia, R2-D2 in a 2015 version, crediting these tutorials with helping the campaign… Read More
PayPal is rolling out an update to its mobile application which it hopes will put charitable giving in the forefront of customers’ minds. With a new button that appears at the bottom of the home screen of its app – below options to order ahead or pay in-store – PayPal users can support a favorite cause through an in-app donation. The button connects users to the tens… Read More
