Rocket blast are loud, bright and, well, anything but subtle. That’s the whole point, really. It takes a heck of a lot of firepower to slip the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings (I’m told). Of course, such explosiveness is tough to shoot with a standard camera. So NASA did the NASA thing and built a camera capable of capturing the subtle complexity… Read More
Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-based so-called “talent first” investor that targets technical graduates in Europe and beyond to put them through a six-month program where they form teams and in turn found startups, is building its own U.S. based investment team. Read More
Sharing-economy-powered car rental competitor Turo is taking its battle with the incumbents to places few have dared venture. The company used computer vision to determine the color of all the cars in its inventory and is making it possible to select the car for your next adventure based on your favorite color. The company also announced it has doubled the number of cars available on the platform. Read More
Memebox, an e-commerce company specializing in beauty products from Korea, has closed a significant $65.95 million Series C funding round to fuel further expansion. Read More
Google Now, the intelligent personal assistant bundled into Android and Google’s search application, is already adept at bringing you the information you need at the right time, whether that’s traffic alerts, event reminders, sports scores, stock updates, weather, flight info, and much more. But one area where Google Now falls a little short is in customizing the assistant… Read More
Today, Pingpad, which launched last year as a consumer mobile app, did an about-face, announcing it has built a collaboration tool on top of the popular Slack enterprise communications platform. It shut down the consumer mobile app recently to concentrate on this approach.
Ross Mayfield, one of the founders of PingPad, has been around since the earliest days of Enterprise 2.0, founding… Read More
On demand ride provider Lyft is getting physical – creating actual gift cards with $20 in ride credit that people can buy beginning today at participating Starbucks stores across the U.S. The cards also come with a $5 Starbucks gift card as a free bonus, and Lyft passengers will also start being able to earn Starbucks Reward Stars by riding. This isn’t Lyft’s first tie-up… Read More
Kepler Communications has raised $5 million in seed funding to create a network of small, easily replaced satellites to create a real-time network through with internet of things (IoT) devices can communicate, essentially building a cellular network in space through which machinery and equipment can talk to one another and to its handlers. “You can think of it as a cell phone tower… Read More
Facebook is making the HTML of its web ads indistinguishable from organic content so it can slip by adblockers. But in exchange for taking away this option for controlling ads from people, it’s allowing them to opt-out of ad targeting categories and Custom Audience customer lists uploaded by advertisers. Today all desktop users will see an announcement atop the News Feed explaining… Read More
Our world looks very different from when Steve Jobs held aloft the first iPhone in 2007. Marketers didn’t use technology beyond their website analytics, email marketing and display ads. It’s clear that the era of data-driven marketing is just getting started — and privacy is rapidly becoming the defining issue of the digital era. Read More
A total of 1,035 images to be exact – taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been doing its thing for a decade now. Every month, the JPL-managed spacecraft dutifully sends back images of the red planet, alongside a handful of fellow Mars-orbiting space crafts.
As Popular Science points out, every 26 months or so, the MRO transmits a massive payload of shots… Read More
Twilio’s co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson will join us at Disrupt SF in September. We last talked to Lawson at Disrupt London last year, but since then, his company, which helps developers build audio, video and text messaging into their apps, has successfully gone public. Read More
There is little in the world of video content as purely enjoyable to me as the work Marvel is doing with Netflix in their original shows. That’s why the above trailer for Luke Cage is so incredibly exciting. Marvel already had me hooked on this show when it showed us a teaser at San Diego Comic Con this year (also embedded below), but the trailer above adds some more meat to the… Read More
The use of Hadoop-based open source big-data technology continues to grow among enterprises, and today MapR Technologies, one of the bigger startups in the space, has announced another $50 million in funding to secure its place as a leading vendor and gear up for an IPO. The investment is being led by Future Fund — Australia’s sovereign wealth fund — and also includes… Read More
Virtual reality broadcasting startup NextVR has closed an $80 million Series B round of funding, WSJ reports. With this latest splash of cash, NextVR is looking to expand beyond US markets and tackle Asian markets where demand for virtual reality content is growing. Last month, regulatory filings in China revealed that NextVR had raised $20M from CITIC Group at a reported $800 million… Read More
Twitter’s curated tweet slideshow Moments has failed to move the user growth needle. But the sagging public company hopes to make itself accessible and indispensable by allowing more than just its in-house curators and partnered news publishers make Moments. Today Twitter announced that “a broader group of creators will be making Moments, including influencers, partners, brands…… Read More
Well, sure. If you’re Fender and you’re looking to join the mobile app race, of course you’re going to start with a tuner. The straightforwardly named Fender Tune marks the latest in the iconic guitar-maker’s recent attempts to diversify its offerings – most notably with the launch of a line of in-ear monitors a few months back. It’s hardly an untapped… Read More
For the past two years, Shyp has been ramping up its efforts to appeal to businesses as a go-to, more simplified shipping service. That started off with a big partnership with eBay to help sellers ship their products. And that’s continuing today with a new model for business shipments that caters directly toward sellers looking to move a large number of products. Starting today, Shyp… Read More
BloomReach has always been about helping online retailers maximize their revenue algorithmically by adjusting content in an automated fashion based on what it knows about the visitor and his or her preferences. In the latest release announced today, the company builds on this by offering data and analytics to help human merchandizers make better daily decisions about how to optimize their… Read More
It’s 2016 and the physical world is slowly being uploaded to the cloud. Matterport, a company creating tools to allow 3D spaces to be scanned into virtual reality, is grabbing some more cash and some more strategic partners as it seeks to continue expanding its laser mapping technology. Matterport has raised $56 million to date, including a $30 million Series C in June of last year led… Read More
