PicsArt today launched a brand new pair of apps for iOS, adding Prisma-like effects for photographs and videos to the visually stimulating toolbox that lives inside your phone. The company also launches a Remix Me feature, turning photo adjustments into a social experiment not entirely unlike what we saw with the now-defunct Dubble app. Read More
Not one for the self-conscious, Ghostdrone 2.0 VR from Ehang adds a new twist to flying an UAV around. Rather than using a traditional controller, to fly the Ghostdrone VR, the user dons a headset to get a point-of-view perspective of what the drone is seeing. The drone is controlled by gestures, touch commands and tilting of a smartphone, while the camera is controlled by the headset. Read More
“I want to be the global leader. I don’t want to build the non-relevant European or French player.” That’s why Emmanuel de Maistre just sold Redbird, his drone-powered analytics provider for construction and mining companies, to US drone services giant Airware. Together they can sell packages of aerial vehicle hardware, flight software, data collection, cloud… Read More
I spent a week in Tokyo last month as a speaker at the CEDEC gaming conference. Had you asked 10 year old me about Japan, I would have conjured up images of Godzilla, Dragon Ball Z, and ninjas. Funnily enough, day trips to Akihabara and Harajuku brought some of these to life through arcades, cosplayers, and stores full of manga collectibles. Walking around Tokyo, I saw virtual reality poised… Read More
Apple might buy McLaren, YouTube implements a new site moderation platform, Netflix to triple the amount of original content that it produces, Lemonade wants to change the way people get renters and homeowners insurance, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invests $3 billion to cure disease. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Adoption of digital finance could add $3.7 trillion dollars to the GDP of emerging markets economies, including $1.1 trillion in China alone, according to a new McKinsey & Company report. The strategy consulting firm’s Global Institute released Digital Finance For All: Powering Inclusive Growth in Emerging Economies, at a New York event featuring a keynote by Gates Foundation… Read More
Weebly launched a new version of its platform today. While the company started out as an easy-to-use website creator and editor (I used it to build my own website), CEO David Rusenko said that with Weebly 4, “We feel like for the first time we’re past a website builder — it’s something substantially different.” To be clear, the website editor is still a core part… Read More
There’s always been an ongoing conversation amongst successful tech entrepreneurs about how to “give back.” Not everyone can afford to found an entire hospital, and yet many feel a desire to do something more than move on to the next startup. What probably needs to change is not so much the conversation around the “big exit” but the “conversation”… Read More
Two years ago Flickr rolled out Marketplace, a photo licensing service that was meant to help Flickr users get paid by big websites and media properties that wanted to use that user’s photos.
As of today, Flickr Marketplace is going away. It’ll take a few months for Flickr to wind things down, and Flickr notes that any royalties due to users will be paid, but the program is… Read More
Aria Systems is bringing together the chocolate of usage- and subscription-based revenue opportunities with the peanut butter of increasingly connected automotive systems. The resulting candy (to complete this metaphor) that launched this week is Aria for Connected Vehicles. This is a cloud-based monetization platform for connected cars, on-demand transportation, telematics and more.… Read More
You know how sometimes you look at a piece of research and think, “I suppose it’s an interesting technical problem, but isn’t teaching an AI to hunt and kill humans a pursuit fundamentally dangerous to the continued existence of mankind?” This is one of those times. Read More
Whenever you see wide shots of a TV audience, you see huge contraptions with cameras on them, enabling TV folks to create fantastic swooping shots. If you want some of that in your life, Joby can help with its Action Jib kit. It’s great to get close to the action and to make the people around you think you’ve lost your mind by sporting the most outrageous selfie stick ever. Read More
The sparsely populated Spratly Islands are quickly becoming the center of one of the most contentious international disputes between world powers since the fall of the Soviet Union. Alarmingly, the use of cyber attacks suggests we might already be in the midst of a new Cold War playing out in cyberspace — where America’s advantage is not as clear as it is with conventional armies… Read More
Whether you’re a high school student or an NFL team owner, everybody texts. ReplyBuy, a finalist in the 1st and Future competition, wants to use the text message to get you tickets for sporting events. 1st and Future is a sports-centric startup competition produced as a joint effort between the NFL, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and TechCrunch. The current version… Read More
Things are looking up for adtech companies on Wall Street — or at least for one of them. The Trade Desk debuted on NASDAQ today at a price of $28.75 per share, up nearly 60 percent from its IPO price of $18. And while there wasn’t a dramatic pop, it continued to climb and closed the day at $30.10 per share. That’s a good start, particularly considering that adtech companies… Read More
It’s common practice these days for companies that hold significant amounts of user data to publish transparency reports. Google, Facebook, Dropbox and Slack all put out their numbers on a regular basis, breaking down government requests for user data by country and type (platforms typically receive requests for law enforcement investigations, as well as copyright takedowns and other… Read More
A few weeks ago, True Ventures closed its newest, early-stage fund with $310 million, which is just a slight step up from its last, $295 million fund, despite some enormous wins like Fitbit, whose first check came from True. (As you likely recall, the wearable device maker staged a highly successful public offering last year.) We weren’t able to catch up with firm co-founders Phil… Read More
Bots are a useful tool on Wikipedia: they identify and undo vandalism, add links and perform other tedious tasks set by their human masters. But even these automated helpers come into conflict, reverting and re-reverting each other on the same topic — sometimes for years. Read More
Waze’s engaged community is definitely its most powerful asset, and now the company wants to broaden its community to include tunnel operators who want to fill in the current gaps in wireless navigation tech. These roadways have typically been frustrating to all manner of wireless communication, posing a problem for everything from AM radio to modern GPS navigation. It’s that… Read More
