Oculus says it has resolved its shipping delays to the point where new orders now ship in two to four business days, which is a considerable improvement to where things were at just a short while ago, if you’ve been paying attention. The reason things are improving is that the virtual reality company has finally caught up with the pre-order backlog incurred by its hardware, the Rift… Read More
Lots of startups want to reinvent email, and some, like Slack, occasionally manage to change the way we work. At the end of the day, though, email isn’t going away and company-wide collaboration tools only really work when everybody is on the same platform. RedKix, which is launching its private beta today, has raised $17 million in seed funding from a group of high-profile investors… Read More
Oculus is running its third developer conference for people interested in building VR experiences. Oculus Connect 3 is (you guessed it) the third annual developer conference hosted by the company, and it’s taking place in San Jose between October 5 and October 7.
The event typically contains some news relevant to both developers and end users, presented at one big keynote and ensuing… Read More
Microsoft announced this morning a new program aimed at expanding Surface’s footprint in the enterprise, dubbed “Surface as a Service.” The initiative will allow businesses to lease Surface devices, alongside subscriptions to Office 365 and Windows 10. The company says this will allow customers to benefit from access to the latest hardware as well as faster device refresh… Read More
Future Mobility is only four months old, but that isn’t stopping the auto startup from rolling out with its ambitious plans. Backed by Chinese Internet giant, Tencent, Future Mobility is aiming to sell premium electric cars by 2020 on a worldwide scale, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The startup has already poached 50 engineers from the likes of Google, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and… Read More
People with deafness have plenty of ways to navigate everyday situations as if they had no disability at all, but there are still situations that present dangers unique to them — not being able to hear a smoke alarm or gunshot, for instance. SoundSense is a small wearable device that listens for noises that might require immediate attention and alerts the user when it detects one. Read More
Pokémon Go isn’t reading your Gmail. The makers of the hot, new mobile game are fixing a bug that allowed the app to gain full access to users’ accounts, when they signed in using their Google account information. The company claims it didn’t mean to ask for such elevated permissions, and it will now correct this. The app had the power to access your Gmail, your Google… Read More
For those in need of substantial PC storage, spinning hard drives are still very much a reality. That’s changing, of course, though not quite as quickly as many upgraders are hoping. $700 will get you a 2TB solid state hard drive from the friendly folks at Samsung, and now you can double that storage at more than double the price. The company’s been offering up server-ready drives… Read More
Yesterday afternoon, before he took the stage at the Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, we sat down with GV CEO Bill Maris in a billowing white tent on the campus of the Aspen Institute, where the conference is being held. We talked about how Brexit impacts GV’s European strategy. (You may recall it has an office in London.) We also asked Maris about some of GV’s… Read More
At TechCrunch’s upcoming Disrupt SF (Sept. 12-14), artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual/augmented reality (AR/VR) will be a big subject on the main stage as well as a featured presence on the exhibit floor, where TechCrunch will host a startup pavilion for each category. Because there are lots of very early stage startups in AI and VR/AR, we are offering five companies in each… Read More
In his iconic Star Wars series, George Lucas envisioned a world in a galaxy far, far away, where, among other things, doctors were droids and bots. Lucas viewed medical care as algorithmic, and therefore well within the capacity of intelligent machines. Does the world of healthcare in the Star Wars films — where bots are the new docs — mirror our own not-so-distant future of medicine? Read More
Google’s Project Fi wireless service has long allowed its subscribers to take their phones to more than 135 countries without having to worry about getting a huge bill for international data usage. That’s because international data is simply included in the company’s plans without a surcharge. Until now, though, you would only get 2G speeds when traveling abroad, but… Read More
HealthTap, a six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based telehealth startup that says 102,000 doctors now use its platform to connect with patients, has officially snapped up DocPhin, whose app made it easier for doctors to find and read medical research. DocPhin was founded five years ago and had raised roughly $1.6 million from investors, including Rock Health, Startup Health, and Romulus… Read More
Sisense, a company which helps customers link multiple data sources and summarize them in a single dashboard view, has been working on ways to understand the data outside of the context of a computer. Today, the company announced an initiative called Business Intelligence Virtually Everywhere. That could involve asking questions to a voice-driven system like the Amazon Echo or… Read More
Freshly is announcing that it has raised $21 million in Series B funding. The New York City-based company delivers healthy meals for a price of around $11 per meal — which may make it sound like many other food startups, but CEO Michael Wystrach (pictured below with his co-founder Carter Comstock) said the model is different in some key ways. Unlike a meal kit service such as Blue… Read More
The European Commission has formally adopted a new framework for governing personal data transfers between the EU and the US, replacing the prior Safe Harbor agreement which was invalidated last fall, and aiming to end nine months of uncertainty. Read More
Codecademy, an online coding school with 16 million registered users, has built out its footprint without charging its students a penny to use it. Now, as more questions arise about how and when the startup might start monetizing its services, it is announcing $30 million in new funding that could be an indication of what might come next. Naspers, the (for-profit) media giant based out of… Read More
After last summer’s vicious fight between Uber and the City of New York there hasn’t been much talk about the state of ridesharing in the Big Apple. But today a research report from Morgan Stanley, shared by Recode, shed some light on how ridesharing has been growing in the city. The report compares ride numbers from NYC Taxis (which are released by the city) to the number of… Read More
Pokemon Go adds $9 billion to Nintendo’s value, Walmart has a free shipping week because of Prime Day, Pokemon Go rakes in $1.6 million a day in revenue, Pokemon Meetups are happening all over the place, robbers target Pokemon Go players. All this on Crunch Report! Read More
