Strictly speaking, video isn’t an interactive medium, but a new research project from MIT aims to change that: The school’s CSAIL lab has come up with a technique through which viewers can reach out and “touch” objects in videos, manipulating them directly to achieve effects similar to what you’d expect if you were actually touching the object live in the real… Read More
Once upon a time the milkman delivered milk directly to your home. The Avon and Tupperware ladies had private parties in the comfort of a neighbor’s house. The Hoover salesperson demonstrated the vacuum cleaner on your living room carpet. It was a high-touch, well-informed, personalized and customer-friendly experience. What changed all that? Read More
I’ve been rolling past videos on Facebook and Twitter for a while now, wondering why social media is so fascinated by puppies being saved from floods, babies hearing for the first time and grandmothers who have something sassy and wise to say about body acceptance. And, recently, I’ve come to realize what is going on.
Whether it seems like it or not, we are entering a new age of… Read More
If you’re an Etsy investor, you’re somewhere between ecstatic and off the rails after two days of gains totaling more than 23 percent. Fortunately for investors, the fun hasn’t stopped.
The e-commerce site specializing in handmade goods posted its second quarter earnings just after the bell today. Investors reacted by trading shares in the company up in after-hours trading. Read More
TechCrunch is pleased to bring you 500 Startups’ Batch 17 Demo Day today, August 2nd, starting at 1:00pm PT.
500 Startups is a global seed fund and startup accelerator founded by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. 500 has invested in a variety of technology startups all over the world and maintains regional funds focused on Korea, Thailand, Turkey and North Africa, among other… Read More
Medium announced today that it has acquired Embed.ly to support publishers with backend APIs for embedding content. Embed.ly supports writers by providing analytics on content and customized recommendations and promotions. Their APIs are currently used by an all-star list of publishers, including The New York Times, NPR and The Atlantic. Companies like Reddit and Airbnb also use the service.… Read More
The NFL and Snapchat heart each other, and will continue to heart each other for multiple years to come: The two announced an extension to their “strategic partnership” today, which includes Snapchat’s first official sports league Discover channel, an NFL-programmed collection of piping hot football fan service content. The NFL is also doubling down on its existing commitment… Read More
Amazon announced the release of Elastic MapReduce (EMR) 5.0.0 today, which includes, among other things, support for 16 open source Hadoop projects. As AWS continues to hone its various tools to help customers manage myriad enterprise functions in the cloud, this latest one is aimed at data scientists and other interested parties looking to manage big data projects with Hadoop. For those… Read More
People.ai, a company bringing machine learning algorithms to sales operations, is emerging from stealth. The platform uses machine learning tech to give sales reps what it calls a predictive playbook on how to close deals based on past success. People.ai also shows managers how well team members are doing in relation to this standard. The company is part of Y Combinator’s summer… Read More
Anyone interested in the history of personal computing will surely have heard of the Alto, but when’s the last time you got to play with one? It’s been a while even for Paul Allen — long enough that he decided to have a couple restored at the computer history museum in Seattle. There’s even an emulator in case that’s a bit far for you to to travel. Read More
You can now buy Microsoft’s HoloLens Development Edition, the company’s futuristic augmented reality helmet, without having to go through an application process. Until now, Microsoft only made HoloLenses available to developers who put in an application. Now, if you have $3,000 to spare and you are in the U.S. or Canada, you can simply buy up to five units directly from Microsoft.… Read More
Along with today’s rollout of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft is also debuting a new version of its Skype Windows application, which the company says has been redesigned from the ground up. In addition to the new app’s look, Skype is also now integrated with Windows 10, which means it can work more seamlessly with the operating system. For example, you’ll be able… Read More
For those who think that Google Hangouts, Slack or Skype aren’t enough to meet their business needs, please allow me to introduce you to Pluot. The company just raised $2.5 million from a slew of investors, including TenOneTen Ventures, Root Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Haystack and Gokul Rajaram. Founded by Kwindla Kramer and Doug Brunton, Pluot combines a hardware and software system… Read More
The one thing you never hear in Silicon Valley is an entrepreneur admit they copied someone else. Yet there in the headquarters of Facebook, the world’s most prolific product cloner, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom surprised me. Read More
Chinese tech company Cheetah Mobile has acquired French startup News Republic for $57 million. News Republic is a news aggregator — think about it as a sort of Flipboard, Apple News or RSS reader on steroids. Cheetah Mobile is the company behind optimization tools for computers and phones, such as Battery Doctor and Clean Master. News Republic has worked with around 1,650 news… Read More
Six months after launching AMP for news stories in its mobile search results, Google today announced the next step for the project: moving AMP beyond news and bringing it to other mobile sites, too. Just like with the rollout of AMP pages for news sites, Google is launching a demo site today that will allow you to test what this experience is like and give developers the opportunity to… Read More
Just over a year after it won the inaugural Make It In Brooklyn pitch competition (and the $50,000 cash prize that went with it) the Brooklyn-based startup Happy has been acquired by PaidEasy, a New York-based mobile payment app for restaurants. Read More
Everyone loves stickers. Snapchat must be on to us because the company just launched Geostickers, a new feature that lets users send city specific stickers in snaps and messages. There are 15 stickers available in San Francisco as of now and we expect more to come. The adorable caricatures delightfully mock tech culture, jab at rising rents, and highlight local landmarks. In addition to… Read More
San Francisco-based Attic Labs is launching Noms today, a new decentralized database that takes it cues from projects like Git, Camlistore, ipfs, bup and others. As the company also announced today, Attic Labs has raised a $8.1 million Series A round led by Greylock that will allow it to continue to work on Nom and other projects. Harrison Metal and a number of angel investors also… Read More
Samsung’s Gear 360 has only been available in drips and drabs. The company first introduced the VR camera back at Mobile World Congress in February and has made it available outside of the U.S. Here in the U.S., however, this have been a little more touch and go. Eager early adopters got the briefest of opportunities to pick up the device in extremely limited quantities back in June… Read More
