There’s no doubt that technology has drastically evolved since President Barack Obama took office in 2008. Obama acknowledged it himself during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit this year — while on stage with Mark Zuckerberg, he mentioned using “this new thing called MySpace” on the campaign trail.
But the popularity of Myspace certainly isn’t the only thing… Read More
As LinkedIn inches closer to completing its $26 billion acquisition by Microsoft, smaller rivals have stepped up their game building viable alternatives for those who might want more independent products when it comes to managing contacts in their professional networks. FullContact — one such competitor — has now raised a further $25 million. The funding brings the total… Read More
What if your entire roof was made up entirely of dedicated solar power cells? No, not adorned with the current kind of solar panels you’ve likely seen on the existing roofs of a few neighbour houses – an entire roof actually made up of solar gathering material, rather than add-ons that install after the fact. That’s the vision described by Elon Musk in SolarCity’s… Read More
The used car industry is an interesting business. The market is huge – 45 million used cars are bought each year in the U.S. But the biggest player, CarMax, only controls about 2% of the market – but is still valued at about $12 billion by Wall Street. So that makes the market not only ripe for disruption, but also extremely lucrative. Carvana is a used car dealer that thinks… Read More
September 7 is going to be a busy day. Sony sent out invites for a press event in New York. The company will likely unveil the successor to the PlayStation 4. On the same day, Apple could also hold its usual iPhone launch event for the rumored iPhone 7. The event is called “PlayStation Meeting,” and the company plans to “share details about the PlayStation business.”… Read More
Netflix began helping its users test their internet connection for streaming speeds in May when it introduced Fast.com. Now it is bringing that service to mobile with the launch of apps for iOS and Android, as first spotted by 9to5Mac. Read More
As the world turns, customer service seems to evolve much more slowly than most all other services. The problems that induce more hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing than solutions only seeming to be further abstracted by bad tech and the customer is these days left hanging up the phone after cussing out a robot.
For how much effort has been paid to stepping up the subpar quality of Siri and… Read More
Coffiest — a mixture of coffee and caffeine — is the newest offering from Soylent, Facebook will bypass adblockers but give users an option to opt out of some advertising, NES classic edition will save game play (hooray!), Amazon is testing new pilot episodes on Twitch, and NASA builds its own HDR camera. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Much has been written about the ambitions of AltSchool, a San Francisco-based startup that’s aiming to change the way that school children learn. Its big idea, broadly, is that personalized learning is far more effective than the standardized education that most students are stuck with today. As important, personalized learning is scalable, believes AltSchool, which operates seven… Read More
Hundreds of thousands of jobs that require both business and technical skills are open in the U.S., which means it’s likely your company is hiring for an important member of your team. But if you are relying on typical tried-and-true measures to find candidates, there are many potential great fits with the right skills that won’t even make it past the initial screening process. Read More
Disrupt SF 2016 is right around the corner, and time is running out to get tickets to the hottest startup show in the Bay Area for the lowest possible price. You have just four days left to snag early-bird tickets to Disrupt for $1,995 apiece, a full $1,000 less than what it will cost you when early-bird ticket sales end on Friday. Head over to our ticketing page and get your deeply… Read More
Following the bell today, Yelp reported a strong second quarter 2016 financial performance that made the stock soar almost 11 percent in after-hours trading. Yelp’s earnings release included better-than-expected revenue of $173.4 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.16. As part of the earnings release, Yelp made two additional announcements. First, the company said it… Read More
This is the strategy behind Instagram Stories.
Snapchat invented a brilliant format for sharing day-to-day life: photo and video slideshows jazzed up with commentary that disappear after 24 hours so you’ll share an unpolished window into what you see. It quickly eclipsed the popularity of Snapchat’s 10-second exploding private messages, and made the app grow to 150 million daily… Read More
Say you’ve got an experiment or prototype satellite that you want to expose to the ravages of space. Sure, you could launch it with a bunch of others, but what if you need it back afterwards? NanoRacks has you covered. Read More
Small businesses have their pick of affordable DIY website-building platforms. But these “no coding skills required” platforms struggle to acquire and retain customers. While the UI is often beautifully designed, it’s still too much work — and for business owners, who has the time? A fresh crop of startups is putting the power of design and development back into the… Read More
The Walt Disney Company just announced that it’s paying $1 billion for a 33 percent stake in BAMTech, the video streaming company created by Major League Baseball. As a result of the deal, BAMTech is also spinning out of MLB’s broader digital media business, MLB Advanced Media. BAMTech’s clients aren’t limited to baseball (they include HBO Now, the National Hockey… Read More
TU-Automotive, which analyzes the future of the connected, autonomous car, recently hosted a webinar focused on the relationship between automotive manufacturers and startups. SK Kim, venture capitalist and manager at Hyundai Ventures, and Liz Kerton, executive director of the Autotech Council, laid out the challenges of mashing together a century-old industry with nimble new companies. As… Read More
Intel announced Tuesday that it is acquiring deep learning startup Nervana Systems in a move that looks to bolster the role of AI solutions within the company. Recode reports that the price tag of the deal is north of $350 million, adding to what has been a pretty active (to put it mildly) last few weeks in tech M&A. In a blog post, Nervana CEO and co-founder Naveen Rao specified that… Read More
Good news, Apple developers – Apple today has released its 5th version of the iOS 10 beta build along with new betas for watchOS 3, macOS, and tvOS. With this release, we’re getting closer to the final, public build of iOS – it’s likely that there will only be one or two more betas before its release expected in September. While the first few betas were buggy, as… Read More
The wait is over, hackathon fans. With Disrupt SF 2016 right around the corner, we thought it was high time we released the first wave of tickets to the Disrupt SF Hackathon. The hackathon takes place September 10-11 at Pier 48 in San Francisco. Those of you looking to spend the weekend before Disrupt hard at work coding, tinkering and hacking together something pretty awesome can get your… Read More
