Back in July, a group of Faroe Islanders launched their own version of Street View, cheekily called “Sheep View 360,” by outfitting sheep on the island with 360-degree camera and using that to fuel its own mapping project. The Faroe Island crew was acting alone, in an effort to shore up its absence of Google street-level coverage using the independent Danish territory’s… Read More
It’s possibly one of the few remaining near-universal experiences for mobile users: the frustration of trying to zoom in on an Instragram image and remembering that you can’t. That’s now changing, since Instagram is rolling out pinch-to-zoom support in its iOS app starting today. The new feature will let users zoom in on both photos and videos in the main feed, on profile… Read More
Coursera, the education tech platform that offers online courses from prestigious colleges and universities, is branching into corporate learning and development and has officially launched Coursera for Business today. Coursera CEO Rick Levin, formerly the president of Yale University, told TechCrunch that the move was a natural one for the startup. “We have 21 million registered… Read More
HTC is continuing to invest heavily in building up the virtual reality ecosystem that it hopes to one day dominate.
Steel Wool Studios, an Oakland-based gaming studio made up of Pixar veterans with a few decades of animation experience under their belts, announced today that it has closed a $5 million round of Series A funding coming entirely from HTC, the manufacturer of the Vive virtual… Read More
Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley faces a serious challenge in that it has to keep outdoing itself to properly satirize the real Silicon Valley, where crazy pants crap happens all the time. So it’s not surprising to see stuff from the show bleed into the world of real Valley startups, as with the new promotion from Airbnb-for-cars startup Turo that kicks off today. For goofs, Turo is… Read More
A startup from Columbus called BYLINED is aiming to make it a bit easier for brands and people to come together in a win/win situation resulting in more unique photography. Through their free app and photo ecosystem, BYLINED enables brands, agencies or publishers to issue a request for a certain type of photo—an assignment or commission so to speak—that people with smartphones… Read More
The popular, Bluetooth-connected lost item finder Tile is today introducing a new product dubbed “Tile Slim” that’s designed to be kept in your wallet, so you can find it if it ever goes missing. The device – which the company claims is the world’s thinnest Bluetooth tracker – finally makes it possible to use Tile with not only your wallet without the bulk,… Read More
Apple is about to announce the next iPhone on September 7, and the plot thickens. A new leak spotted by Nowhere Else shows the hypothetic packaging of the iPhone 7 Plus. This cardboard leak shows that Apple could sell the iPhone 7 with Lightning EarPods, replacing the good old EarPods with a headphone jack.
More surprisingly, it also says that the iPhone 7 might come bundled with a… Read More
A group of five engineers and product people get together, raise some angel funding, build a startup, make little to no money and sell for $10 million. What just happened? Common narratives assert that it’s the tech bubble; it’s a naive acqui-hire; it’s collective irrationality. Maybe it’s something else altogether: a fundamental shift in how we compensate the extreme… Read More
For all the advances in smartphone photography, you still don’t really have a DSLR-quality camera in your pocket when you’re carrying one (not yet anyway). DxO’s One, a tiny little box with a lens, a relatively large image sensor for its compact size and a Lightning connector changed all that last year, and now it’s getting a suite of accessories to bump up the value.… Read More
More of the content we’re looking for is saved in mobile applications, which is why Google has been working to bring that information to the surface by indexing apps in search. Now, it will do the same thing on your phone, too. The company is introducing a new search mode in its Google app called “In Apps,” which will allow you to search inside your mobile applications for… Read More
Amazon’s growing shipping operation is profiled at length in a new Bloomberg feature, and the article paints a picture of the e-commerce giant putting together the pieces to build one of the largest and most effective global shipping operations in the world, from centralized distribution hubs, to bulk air transport, to last-mile front door delivery. While on the surface, Amazon is still… Read More
The ZenScreen is a strange, but intriguing duck. It’s not a tablet or a convertible notebook, it’s a 15.6-inch portable screen. That mean it’s not a standalone device so much as it is an extra display designed to offer laptop users additional real estate on the go, connect to a primary device via USB-A or C. ASUS is really pushing the portability factor here, and with a… Read More
Netflix has made Stranger Things season two official, with a teaser including a lot of references from 1984, which is the setting for the sequel to the popular original series. The show’s second season will debut on the streaming service in 2017.
The adventure continues. Stranger Things 2 is coming 2017. pic.twitter.com/3H4WR3DGEj
— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) August 31… Read More
Garmin has stopped trying. Meet the company’s new action camera: A clone of a GoPro. The company that innovated in the personal navigator space just announced the second generation of its action camera and it looks exactly like a GoPro.
The new Virb Ultra 30 packs the goods to record at 4k and allows the user to control its functions through voice commands. Just say “Okay… Read More
This year’s IFA is certain to be another giant event for wearable launches, but only one company can be the first. Keep in mind, we’re still a few days out from the official kickoff event of the giant consumer electronics event here in Berlin, but the press events have already hit full force.
ASUS took to the stage today, just after Acer wrapped up, in a bit of alphabetical… Read More
New York-based real estate startup Compass is raising yet another round of funding, this time at a valuation above $1 billion. The new financing was led by Wellington Management Capital and brings the total capital raised to $210 million. Existing investors IVP, Thrive Capital and Founders Fund also participated in the round. While there are a number of real estate sites including Zillow… Read More
The day when you pull up next to a car in traffic and find no one sitting at the steering wheel is probably closer than you think. As TechCrunch’s Lora Kolodny noted yesterday, California has amendments to a bill before its legislative assembly that would allow for the testing of cars without any driver in the seat at all on actual roads. And earlier this week, Michigan’s state… Read More
This past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated testing for the Zika virus at all U.S. blood centers. That juices demand for Zika-testing technology, but one company that isn’t welcome to provide it yet is Theranos.
The beleaguered blood analysis startup has run afoul of the F.D.A., yet again, the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou reports.
Specifically… Read More
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in Nigeria. News of his unannounced trip broke Tuesday with social media photos of him visiting the Co-Creation Hub (Cchub) innovation center in Lagos. Zuckerberg then dropped in at Andela, a software developer accelerator, in which he and his wife’s foundation invested $24million earlier this year. It seems Zuckerberg travels a bit like the… Read More
