Of all the products I’ve seen this year, none are more worthy of our time and attention than the Ripple Rug. Created by Fred and Natasha Ruckel, the Ripple Rug is a rug with holes and lumps in it. Your cat can climb inside, stick its paws out, and generally get all up inside that business. It’s 35 inches on each side and made of recycled plastic bottles.
Why is the Ripple Rug so… Read More
I’d like to tip my imaginary hat off to Jessica O. Matthews, the black female founder and CEO of renewable energy tech startup Uncharted Play. Her company just closed a $7 million Series A round led by the NIC Fund with participation from Kapor Capital, Magic Johnson Enterprises, BBG Ventures and Lingo Ventures. Read More
There’s something intriguing about low-fi solutions to high-tech problems and the Glance Clock is no exception. In today’s world, a missed Uber can be the difference between a confidence-inducing 5.0 rider rating and a clearly shameful 4.8. Glance Clock, a smart clock that launched at TechCrunch’s hardware battlefield in Las Vegas, looks more analog than digital at first… Read More
For those of us in the mobile advertising technology business, China is one of the most exciting markets in the world in 2016. To say that the mobile ad economy in China is a few years behind the U.S. and Europe is both true and an oversimplification. When you spend time on the ground in China, as I just did a few weeks ago, meeting with over 20 mobile publishers, including titans like… Read More
Cloud Foundry, the Pivotal- and VMware-incubated open source platform-as-a-service project, is going all in on its new Diego container management system. For a while now, the project used what it called Droplet Execution Agents (DEA) to manage application containers. After running in parallel for a while, though, the team has now decided to go all in on its new so-called “Diego”… Read More
All children benefit from new experiences which expand their mental map of the world, but the need is especially acute for children from low-income families. Read More
Elio Motors has raised funds for manufacturing its forthcoming three-wheeled commuter vehicle in a few innovative ways, including Regulation A+ stock offerings. Its latest creative funding is through its reservation system. Anyone who puts down money for an “All In” nonrefundable reservation for an Elio has the base price of their vehicle locked in at $7,300. The wording is a… Read More
Fujifilm is riding high on its strategy of taking camera classics and reinventing them for the modern era, and now it has a new mirrorless medium format camera system that’s likely to win a lot of pseudo-nostalgic interest from photography buffs. The Fujifilm GFX camera system will debut with the GFX 50S, a mirrorless digital camera with a huge 51.4MP, 43.8×32.9mm sensor, as well as… Read More
Mondays, as we all know, are the worst. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for heart-warming videos like puppies sliding on hardwood floors, otters holding hands, or energetic robots doing flips and climbing fences. It helps if, as in this case, the background music is a jam. Read More
Facebook has acquired Nascent Objects, a small California startup founded in 2014 that focuses on creating a modular electronics system that consumers could use to build their gadgets, using reconfigurable components including batteries, camera, sensors and more. The startup worked with design firm Ammunition (also responsible for the design of Beats products pre-Apple acquisition) to create… Read More
Canaan Partners, the multi-stage venture capital firm, is beefing up its enterprise software investment team and looking to spend more time in San Francisco in addition to its longtime home on Sand Hill Road. Joydeep Bhattacharyya and Rich Boyle are joining Canaan as partners where they’ll focus on artificial intelligence and marketplace creation, and mobile-based software as a… Read More
In case you missed it, Aircall announced last week that it had raised another $8 million dollars in funding for its call center software-as-a-service. New York-based VC firm FJLabs as well as existing investors put money into this Series A round. I’m a bit late to the news because last week was TechCrunch Disrupt SF. It’s worth mentioning that because Aircall also participated in… Read More
Did you hear? Twitter would like you to know that its service is now easier to use, thanks to a series of rule revisions announced in May, which have just gone live. Starting today, Twitter is cutting down on what counts towards your 140 characters. As a refresher, that means media content like photos, videos, GIFs, polls and Quote Tweets no longer eat into your character count. Links still… Read More
It was only a few years ago that streaming services were included in the Primetime Emmy awards, when Netflix scored its first win for its drama series “House of Cards.” Today, streaming services are mopping up the awards that used to be reserved for traditional TV networks, and last night’s 2016 Emmys were no exception. Both Netflix and Amazon again took home several… Read More
You can scratch what you heard just a few months ago about the end of SpoonRocket because its new owner, Brazil-based iFood, is bringing it back. Well, sort of. SpoonRocket, the on-demand meal delivery startup that shut down in the U.S. in March, is relaunching in Brazil under its parent company, iFood. At the time of the acquisition, iFood said it planned to use SpoonRocket’s… Read More
Stripe, the startup that competes against the likes of PayPal’s Braintree and WePay to provide payment services to digital businesses, is taking the wraps off its newest product to set it apart from the rest of the pack. Stripe is launching Instant Payouts, a service tailored specifically for marketplaces to pay their contractors “within minutes” to a contractor’s… Read More
One of Google Photos‘ standout features has long been its ability to automatically create short movies whenever it recognizes you went on a trip. Until now, though, the system that built those movies mostly used time and location (as well as some image recognition tools) as markers for which photos to include. Starting today, Google is going beyond simply making these… Read More
Google today is launching a new feature for Google Books which aims to offer a better challenge to Amazon’s Kindle app when it comes to helping you find new things to read. Called “Discover,” this new section in the Google Books application will help point users to new content, including both personalized suggestions as well as other recommendations based on what’s… Read More
Foundry Group, the 10-year-old, Boulder, Colorado-based early-stage venture firm, announced this morning that it as closed its sixth fund, Foundry Group Next, with $500 million. It comes hot on the heels of the firm’s fifth fund, which closed last summer with $225 million. The firm’s fourth fund, called Foundry Group Select, closed with exactly the same amount in 2013 ($225… Read More
