A Master’s Thesis by CMU’s Simon Kalouche posits a new form of robotic leg, one designed for maximum range of motion and, more importantly, an easily control method for force reduction. In other words, this is the kind of leg you want on your robot when you send it to Mars. GOAT stands for Gearless Omni-directional Acceleration-vectoring Topology and uses a single motor and… Read More
Come for the Pokémon Go AR, stay for the muzak Pokémon show theme: Gesture control startup Gestigon has created their very first mixed reality experience you can control with your own hands, and their source of inspiration is the Niantic and Nintendo-developed game that everyone’s going crazy for.
The new offering from Gestigon uses its middleware tech combined with a Google… Read More
Over the past year Instagram has been working to reinvigorate the Explore tab, which is the app’s place for showing you personalized content. What started as a simple algorithm to determine photos you may enjoy has evolved into a full-fledged discovery platform to show you photos and videos that will want to make you spend more time in the app.
A major part off this initiative was… Read More
Netflix and an Enseo, the makers of an in-room entertainment platform for the hospitality industry, today announced an expanded agreement that will see the Netflix app offered in more hotel rooms around the world. Through the Enseo system, hotel guests will be able to log in to their Netflix accounts from their rooms, allowing them to stream Netflix’s collection of TV and shows, as well… Read More
While it seems like a new food delivery business launches or gets funded every season in the U.S., several have scaled back, like Sprig, or shut down entirely like Spoonrocket. Among those that have survived, however, are smart sites and apps serving the office-catering corner of the industry, a $20 billion market in the U.S. alone according to research from Technomic. Now, one of the… Read More
The meme of the moment is here and it’s pretty creepy. As our own Romain Dillet points out the title artistry for the Netflix series Stranger Things is surprisingly beautiful and compelling. Now the good folks at design studio Nelson Cash are letting make our own. While many of the titles I’ve seen so far aren’t very scary it’s still fun to make the thing say funny… Read More
Wheelys Café just raised a large chunk of equity funding on Swedish crowdfunding platform FundedByMe to expand to more countries and pour gas on its already explosive growth around the world. The young company has had an illustrious history already, with a stint in Y Combinator, a successful Indiegogo campaign and now a vastly overfunded equity crowdfunding campaign. Read More
The self-driving car market is set to get very big, very fast, on the back of efforts by the likes of Ford, GM and other major car makers. Hyundai is not a company often included in the list of OEMs at the cutting edge of autonomous tech, and the South Korean company could use some friends to help it keep pace with the development of autonomous driving tech. Hyundai is in discussions with… Read More
Google Classroom, the company’s platform that brings together Google Apps for Education and a number of tools for managing classes and content, is getting one of its regular summer updates today (right in time before the next school year starts).
While Classroom has traditionally focused on offering tools for teachers and students, this new version now also brings in parents and guardians. Read More
Pizza Hut is giving you more than just grease in your next pizza box: The maker of fine savory Italian pies has created a playable DJ interface out of cardboard using partner Novalia’s printable electronics tech. And so I must retire, and become the greatest pizza-based DJ the world has ever seen. My beats are delicious and unexpected, like jalapeño with pineapple. Currently booking… Read More
Cash Money Records will sound familiar if you’re a fan of Drake, Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj — they all share the same record label. An Instagram photo with Apple Music executive Larry Jackson and label co-founder Birdman started a rumor yesterday. Bloomberg confirmed that Apple and Cash Money Records will work together on some exclusive content.
While Jackson has been in charge of… Read More
Several high-level employees at the early-stage venture firm Rothenberg Ventures have recently left, TechCrunch has learned. Among them is Tommy Leep, a partner and the head of Rothenberg’s San Francisco office, who left last month after spending two-and-a-half years with the firm. (A former product manager at Intuit, Leep spent the previous two years as “chief connector” at… Read More
Amazon has teamed up with Product Hunt — the San Francisco-based startup that helps curate and surface the hottest new apps, websites, gadgets, tech creations and more — by offering a collection of products for purchase that have previously trended on Product Hunt’s website. This new collection, called “Featured on Product Hunt,” is available as a part of… Read More
He mastered flying it, and then got a bigger drone. And then another bigger drone. Then came fighting the drones and building his own. Soon, Ettinger was considered by many to be the best drone fighter in the world.
Ettinger is only 16 years old, but he’s found success by getting to the heart of drone battling: Dream up something weird and make it real. Last year he surrounded his… Read More
110 protoypes, 460 hours of lab testing and 11 months of sleep studies later, Casper is ready to starting shipping out dog beds. The mail order mattress startup that is almost single-handedly propping up the world’s podcasters now offers its service to canine companions for $125 a pop. The Casper Dog Mattress model is remarkably similar to the company’s human offering, with… Read More
Airbnb’s ambitions to expand into the travel services market were outed ahead of plans this week, when an “Airbnb Trips” app was briefly available on the Google Play Store for download. The app which offered travelers the ability to book restaurant reservations and city tours, has since been pulled down by the company following news reports detailing its availability and… Read More
Sources are telling TechCrunch that Cisco is planning a significant cost reduction this week, which could involve budget cuts and layoffs. We’ve been hearing that the reductions will be announced on August 17th or 18th and that they will be a part of a push to cut costs by 15 percent, with managers given some flexibility around how they implement this. “A cost reduction of 15%… Read More
Women 2.0, a for-profit for-good media business that works to bring women into the tech industry and help them succeed there, has appointed Kate Brodock as President and Elisa Miller-Out as COO, according to founder Shaherose Charania. Charania will maintain a board seat, she said. The changing of the guard comes for Women 2.0 after a phase of scaling back. Founded in April 2006,… Read More
The Canadian company has never been afraid to take risks with the often-boring world of e-readers, and for that reason alone it is a welcoming presence. Without Kobo pushing the boundaries of screen size, build quality and features like waterproofing, it’s hard to imagine much innovation occurring in the Amazon-dominated space. With the Aura One, the company is doubling down yet again,… Read More
