Cozy, a platform to streamline interactions between property managers and renters, closed an $8.5 million Series B today led by American Family Ventures, with participation from Social Capital, General Catalyst and all other investors that participated in the company’s $1.5 million Series A in 2012. Despite the fact that our homes are becoming “smarter” by the day, the… Read More
Proposed rules that would allow for testing of truly driverless cars on roads in California are gaining steam in the state’s legislature. Specifically, Assembly Bill 1592 in California was revised on Monday to soon allow: “the testing of autonomous vehicles that do not have a driver seated in the driver’s seat and are not equipped with a steering wheel, a brake pedal, or… Read More
London-based Pusher, the company powering The NY Times’ live election results and DraftKing’s fantasy scoring results, just raised $2.5 million to up its stakes further. The money came from SaaS Capital, which focuses on debt financing aimed at the Software as a Service (SaaS) space. Read More
VR is widespread in design, education and entertainment. But before VR hit the mainstream, it was first and foremost an important resource for our armed forces. After decades of perfecting VR in military applications, we are finally making this concept of “inhabiting” a computer-generated environment work for home users. And, VR is going back to the battlefield — to save… Read More
Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, is parting ways with a few dozen employees who work on its Internet of Things platform. According to a Fortune report that we’ve independently confirmed, those employees are joining Google per a restructuring. Both companies are subsidiaries of parent company Alphabet. The move would seem to make sense. Like Nest, Google… Read More
Google is running its own ride-sharing service in San Francisco, The Wall Street Journal reports. The move would put Google in direct, immediate competition with Uber, which helps explain even further the recent departure of Alphabet executive David Drummond from Uber’s board. Google’s new offering piloted in May, according to the WSJ, and uses the Google-owned Waze app to… Read More
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had a slow fundraising start in Silicon Valley. In the June lead-up to the final state primaries, Trump had raised very few dollars in the region that’s typically lucrative for political contenders. A TechCrunch analysis of Federal Election Commission data found that Trump had only raised a paltry $30,556 from donors in San Francisco and… Read More
Digital hospitality platform Velocity announced this week that, following its $16 million Series A last year, the company raised $22.5 million led by DIG Investments. The company creates curated dining experiences for time-poor diners looking to expand their horizons. The money will be invested in expansion to 29 cities over the next three years, with a heavy focus on the U.S. Read More
Facebook’s goal of tracking ads all the way through to a customer’s purchase at point-of-sale is getting a big boost today with a makeover of the Facebook Offers program. Now designed to be more mobile-friendly, Facebook is allowing businesses to create two kinds of offers – those customers can redeem online and those they redeem in-store – while also making it… Read More
A little-known startup is in meltdown mode after a former employee took to Medium to accuse the company of scamming her out of her wages and firing her in retaliation after she filed a wage claim to recoup the unpaid cash. The Medium post was widely shared online; in response, the company shuttered its website and threatened legal action against the writer, calling her “a disgruntled… Read More
Pebble is getting ready to start shipping new hardware, including the Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2, but first it has something for both iPhone and Android based device owners. The new Pebble software update includes some big tweaks to how Pebble operates, both for end users and developers, including improvements to actions and a brand new health app. The key components of the update include… Read More
On-Demand Geofilters from Snapchat let anyone build a custom filter for their event (or for whatever reason – I’m not judging your Snapchat filter needs), which was a petty good idea when the offering launched back in February. Today it becomes an even better idea, thanks to new templates that let users create their own customized geofilters without any special knowledge of… Read More
Calramon Mabalot is a pretty wild kid. He likes 3D printing and, along with his brother, he builds lots of cool projects – including a mechanical hand for a local teacher he met while building 3D projects. In an interview with 3DPrintingIndustry, Mabalot described how he designed and built a prosthetic hand complete with full articulated fingers.
Why did he want to build a 3D-printed arm? Read More
Apple’s reality TV show ‘Planet of the Apps’ keeps getting weirder. Every time Apple and Propagate release new information about the show, it gets harder to understand what they’re actually trying to build. This time, Variety got a statement saying that Jessica Alba is joining the cast of the show as a mentor and adviser. In case you missed the previous episodes, Planet… Read More
Online furniture shop Wayfair has acquired a Boston-based mobile messaging application called Trumpit, with the aim of utilizing its technology in order to expand its customer service offerings. So yes, that means messaging will be a part of the mobile Wayfair application in the future.
Today, the app only offers users the ability to email or call the company when they click into the… Read More
Luxembourg based satellite company SES announced today that they’ve made an agreement with SpaceX to be the first company to launch a payload on a used Falcon 9 rocket. The re-flight, scheduled to take place late this year, will mark the next big milestone on SpaceX’s path toward rocket reusability. To date, Elon Musk’s rocket company has recovered six Falcon 9 boosters,… Read More
You don’t need a PlayStation to play PlayStation games anymore: Sony’s Playstation Now subscription-based game streaming service is now out for PC, and you an grab the app and start playing some of PlayStation’s best legacy titles immediately if you’ve got a Windows machine. It’ll cost you, of course – but not as much as you would’ve paid for the… Read More
While Kickstarter is a great place to start selling products online, and Amazon is a good next step, you’ll often see hardware companies begin shipping their products to local retailers like Best Buy. There’s a good reason for that — online commerce may be increasingly eating away at shopping offline, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t spending a ton of money at… Read More
Okta announced it was bringing identity management to APIs today at its Oktane customer conference in Las Vegas.
For a long time, Okta was about connecting people with cloud applications such as ServiceNow, Salesforce or Office 365. A couple of years ago, the company extended that capability to enable customers to control the devices where employees could access those cloud… Read More
Audi’s upcoming four-door luxury electric car will have a 311-mile range, along with Level 4 self-driving features (essentially full autonomy, for those keeping track) and three separate electric motors, according to a new report from Autocar. The car is set to go head-to-head with the Model S, based on these new stats, and will likely be called the “A9 e-tron” when it goes… Read More
