Hi, I’m Lucia, and I’m the the newest TechCrunch summer writing intern.
I’m going to write from Chicago – please notice the standard Windy City hairstyle in the above pic – where I’m also a graduate student of Journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Read More
It’s been over a year and a half since Microsoft first announced the open source .NET Core project, which aims to bring the core parts of Microsoft’s .NET framework (and its cousin, the web-focused ASP.NET Core) to Linux, OS X and other operating systems that the company didn’t previously support. As Microsoft announced today, .NET Core and ASP.NET Core have now hit 1.0.… Read More
Services like YouTube Gaming and Twitch are great for watching videos and live streams from your favorite gamers, but a new app called Leet, launching now, has a slightly different take. Instead of focusing on live-streamed gameplay and real-time chat, Leet lets gamers share short highlights from their favorite console or PC games to its online community and the social web. Others can then… Read More
Austin, U.S.-based AllClear ID, a provider of identity theft repair and credit monitoring services, has quietly acquired Norway’s Encap Security. The Oslo-based company offers device-based multi-factor authentication and e-signature solutions, predominantly to the financial services industry. Read More
A food delivery startup called Farm Hill is expanding its business from the suburbs of Silicon Valley to San Francisco this week, bucking the trend of so many “on-demand” businesses that focus on dense, urban markets first. Interestingly, Farm Hill benefitted from the demise of one of its city-focused peers in the industry, Spoonrocket. Farm Hill has taken over leases and… Read More
HP is working hard to make a strong Chromebook case for consumers looking for a secondary – or even tertiary – laptop, featuring some upgraded specs at rock bottom prices. Following on the heels of the Chromebook 13 announced back in April, the company’s just revealed the Chromebook 11 G5, a new Chrome OS notebook with some noteworthy features, including, most compelling, a… Read More
Google today announced Project Bloks, a new open hardware platform that allows developers, designers and educators to build physical programming experiences that can help kids (5+) learn to code. While Google worked together with design firm IDEO to build a reference kit, the idea here is to provide a platform that others can use to build their own devices. Google’s team provides the… Read More
The tech hype-cycle works something like this: Some driver triggers a flurry of investments in a particular “theme,” which in turn feeds news flow, panel discussions at conferences and a procession of expert “talking heads.” This febrile atmosphere all too often results in companies that are more noise than substance and an increasingly congested marketplace, which makes… Read More
If you’ve ever gnawed your way through a plastic bottle to get out the last delicious drops of soap you’ll be pleased to learn that researchers at The Ohio State University have created a type of plastic containing small structures that “cradle the droplets of soap aloft above tiny air pockets.” In other words, the soap never touches the bottle so it never sticks.… Read More
People seem to like editing photos through social media, which comes as no surprise with today’s announcement from Twitter: stickers. Made to be plastered over your new photos, Twitter is making sure that emojis, props, accessories, and anything else of the sort is available to add to that penchant of decorating images you post online.
Twitter’s new stickers are also connected… Read More
Two-time entrepreneur Jason Lemkin just closed a debut venture fund with $70 million called SaaStr Fund. It’s an impressive feat and the latest in a string of interesting opportunities that Lemkin has created for himself since selling his most recent company, EchoSign, to Adobe four years ago.
It started with blogging. Lemkin also began actively answering questions about SaaS… Read More
Bee Partners in San Francisco has raised a $30 million fund, its second, to lead investments in very early stage startups based in the U.S. Founded in 2009, the firm is best-known as the first investor in TubeMogul, now a publicly traded adtech company. Bee was also an early backer of the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, drone tech startup Skycatch, the second-hand fashion marketplace Tradesy… Read More
Back in March, we reported how Amazon was poised to up its stakes in the educational publishing market with the launch of a free platform called Inspire for teachers and others to post and share education resources online. Today, the company has confirmed it is doing just that. It has announced Amazon Inspire, an online education resources (OER) platform for teachers to source free… Read More
“We went through 45 mechanical iterations of Cozmo,” explains Boris Sofman. “This was a huge, hugely complex problem of mechanical engineering, industrial design and character design. The goal to make a character that had the size, shape and capabilities, form factor and practicality of a character that wanted to do all that we could do.”
The result is surprisingly small. Read More
Uber already integrates with Spotify so riders can pick their favorite tunes to jam to on their trip, but now Pandora is teaming up with the rideshare giant to do the same — this time for drivers. It’s not clear how many riders actually use the Spotify integration but not many drivers seem to have the set up to use it. Anecdotally, one Uber driver told me he didn’t even know… Read More
Orbital Insight, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based geospatial big data company, has just raised $15 million in Series B funding led by previous investor GV, with participation from CME Ventures and earlier backers Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, and Bloomberg Beta. Together, with an investment and development agreement from In-Q- Tel (the CIA’s venture arm), the company… Read More
If you’re done with selfie sticks and are looking for what comes next in the narcissistic world of self-photography, look no further than Hover Camera, a new “personal” drone that gives you a different — more aerial — view of you and your life. Hover Camera is a tiny foldable drone that hovers around you, controlled by a compatible smartphone app, snapping 4k… Read More
American eBay sellers will soon gain access to Africa’s biggest consumer markets. This comes via a new partnership between the U.S. e-commerce giant and online shopping startup MallforAfrica.com, set to go live July 2016. Read More
Uber China is repositioning itself as an all-in-one solution for transportation, food and entertainment. At TechCrunch Shanghai, Uber China VP of Operations and Regional General Manager of Central China Kate Wang showed off Uber’s new vision for China — one that includes two new offerings, UberLIFE and Uber + Travel, which will roll out across China this year. All-in-one solutions… Read More
