As the Vive becomes an increasingly essential part of HTC’s future, the company is making sure that no stone is left unturned when it comes to potential profit. What perhaps began as a side project for the company is turning into its potential financial future as revenues rapidly decline in the company’s handset division.
Today at VRLA, HTC announced that it will be opening a… Read More
Early on in the Pokémon Go hype cycle, there were signs that players were driving a significant uptick in sales of backup batteries, like the Mophie units you may be familiar with that offer USB connections for topping up mobile devices while you’re away from an outlet. Now, research from analytics firm NPD Group goes beyond early anecdotal evidence to show that in fact, unit sales… Read More
Snapchat opens to the camera by default to spur content creation, and now Facebook is trying the same starting with an Olympics-themed test in Brazil and Canada. Instead of just the “What are you doing?” text status update prompt, users will see an open camera window as Facebook executes on Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to put “video at the heart of all of our apps.”… Read More
When a franchise that essentially died more than a decade ago comes back to life with such fervor, we need to ask ourselves how and why that happened. And if you’re able to stop playing Pokémon Go long enough to read this article, you’ll find the phenomenon is deeply rooted in evolutionary psychology. Read More
A number of businesses use Twitter to interact with their customers and offer support. But that often means responding to angry tweets directed at their account, then switching users over to private messaging to deal with the issues at hand. Now the company is testing a new feature for brands that puts its “Messaging” button front-and-center, thereby encouraging customers to… Read More
Apple has big plans to overhaul its App Store in the months ahead to better tailor the experience to its end users. But ahead of that, the company has introduced a more personalized version of its Apple Store app – yes, the one you use to buy things. According to the company, the app will now recommend new products based on its understanding of the devices you already own. For example,… Read More
Mercedes-Benz isn’t just planning one or two all-electric vehicle options to woo customers away from competitors, including BMW and Tesla who are further along with their EV lineups — it has four models in the works, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg. These cars will be offered under a new sub-brand with a new name, per the report. Read More
Deliveroo, a popular on-demand restaurant food delivery startup in Europe, has raised another $275 million in funding, a Series E investment that we have heard from sources values the company at around $1 billion. This latest round is led by new investor, Bridgepoint, previous investors DST Global and General Catalyst, and also had participation from existing investor Greenoaks Capital. Read More
U.K. startup Network Locum, which has built a staffing platform and workplace management software targeting the U.K.’s National Health Service, has acquired a smaller locum GP-booking platform, Leicester-based RLocums, which operates across the East Midlands. Read More
The average seed round in the nascent cannabis industry in the U.S. hovers around $1 million, according to hemp and cannabis-focused investment research by Poseidon Asset Management. But Denver-based Baker Technologies Inc. has raised $1.6 million in seed funding for software that helps marijuana dispensaries win new customers, eliminate long lines in stores, and retain and reward their… Read More
Digital music may have brought the experience of listening to an artist to a more convenient platform than ever, but there’s never really been a way to replicate the social experience of seeing an artist perform live at a concert.
TheWaveVR is hoping to do just that by utilizing social VR to bring people closer to an artist’s live performances than they’ve ever been digitally. Read More
Spotify is doubling down on its strategy to beat Apple Music with big data-driven personalized playlists like Discover Weekly — a huge hit that saw 40 million users in its first year. Today it launches Release Radar, a 2-hour algorithmically personalized playlist updated each Friday that features newly released songs from artists each user already listens to. Read More
VR’s promise of boundless virtual worlds to explore is, in practice, rather more tethered to reality, given physical limits on play spaces meaning you can only walk so far in the corresponding virtual world before you’re out of sensor range and/or about to bump into a (real) wall. So how to square the circle of infinite virtual worlds vs finite play space? Read More
Delivery by drone or self-driving trucks may not be here any time soon for Amazon.com.
But the e-commerce juggernaut plans to launch its first ever branded cargo plane, the Amazon One, at Seattle’s SeaFair Air Show on Friday.
The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for Amazon.com.
In a press statement ahead of the event, the… Read More
The Olympic Committe prohibits GIFs, Vines and streaming apps, the average internet speed in the U.S. is over 50Mbps, OnePlus sales in Europe halted to meet demand, Grab is raising at a $2.3 billion valuation, and Facebook’s anti-clickbait algorithm buries bogus headlines. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
The Olympics kick off this week and to celebrate, Google is featuring a new interactive doodle in the Google App for iOS and Android every day for the next seven days (and they will all be available for ten days after that). So if you couldn’t make it to Rio (which may be for the better, given all the issues the city currently faces) you can now guide a bunch of delicious fruits through… Read More
Long before HP was known for PCs and laser printers, it built test equipment for electrical engineers. One reason its products succeeded was because they were designed by the very people who ultimately used them. In healthcare, physicians are obliged to use electronic health records systems (which they did not design). So how can the lessons from HP be applied to the healthcare IT industry? Read More
Social game developer Zynga tumbled 9 percent in after-hours trading following the second quarter 2016 earnings announcement after the bell today. The company reported a net loss of $4.4 million, while still beating analysts’ expectations in terms of revenue. For the second quarter ended June 30, the San Francisco-based maker of FarmVille and Words with Friends posted revenue of… Read More
For the millions upon millions of visually impaired people in India, it can be difficult getting hold of the audiobook they want in the language they need it in. A project from Carnegie Mellon University and partners aims to fix that with a free, easily extensible Android app that can be quickly trained to read texts aloud in local languages. Read More
Tomorrow marks the first day of the Olympic Games in Rio. And drone makers DJI have announced the establishment of temporary flight restrictions that will prevent their users from flying into air space around sports arenas in six Brazilian cities hosting international athletic competitions. The restrictions — or “temporary updates to DJI’s no-fly zone system” —… Read More
