The competitive deck appears nearly stacked against the startup, and it seems that every other month a new product launches from a major tech company that’s billed in the tech press as the next “Slack Killer.” What Slack does isn’t actually all that original as startup ideas go. It merely provides an environment for teams to share information inside a chat client. Yet… Read More
What is augmented reality good for? Product visualization to encourage online shopping, reckons Santa Clara-based startup Apollo Box, which has now opened access to its AR tech to all vendors selling products via its ecommerce marketplace. Read More
Apple investing $500 Million into R&D Centers in China, Walmart acquires ModCloth and John Mannes reports to us about his trip at South by Southwest. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
WikiLeaks doesn’t ever make things easy. When it became clear that the organization possessed documents that detail exploits affecting a handful of major tech companies, it looked like Julian Assange would play nice. Now, a week has passed since Assange said he would disclose information about those vulnerabilities to the companies affected. Read More
One of the hardest things about Raspberry Pi and Arduino is figuring out where to stick all the pieces. While both of these systems work well alone — you can have a lot of fun with just a board and an internet connection — it’s also fun to add little things like printers and screens to make fun projects. That’s where the Atomo comes in. Read More
Santa Fe has enlisted tech startup Rubicon Global to figure out what its residents toss in the trash, recycle or send to compost. Using data gathered by garbage collectors and trucks on their normal routes, Rubicon helps municipalities quantify their trash and pinpoint neighborhoods for improvement when they clearly need more education or different waste management services. Read More
The League, a dating app that users have to apply to join, has a new feature that could help with one of the most agonizing parts of the online dating process — wondering if someone’s deliberately ignoring you or if they just haven’t opened the app in a while. Read More
We spend a lot of time and words on what autonomous cars can do, but sometimes it’s a more interesting question to ask what they can’t do. The limitations of a technology are at least as important as its capabilities. That’s what this little bit of performance art tells me, anyway. Read More
We all have our opinions about art (even if that opinion is just I don’t get it) — but what about art as an investment? Arthena, which is part of the current batch of startups at Y Combinator, says it can help investors make money reliably from art. Founder and CEO Madelaine D’Angelo said Arthena first launched as an equity crowdfunding platform for purchasing… Read More
It’s the first enterprise tech IPO of the year and it’s off to the races. MuleSoft, which helps businesses like Netflix and Spotify with their APIs, closed at $24.75, a 46 percent premium to its IPO price of $17. This was after pricing above the expected range of $14 to $16. Read More
Here’s your cool sports hardware demo of the week: ShotTracker, the Kansas City-based startup whose team-focused offering can track and collect analytics from an entire basketball game in real-time, is demoing for all 31 games of the NAIA D1 Men’s National Championship tournament this week in Kansas City. It’s the first time automated, real-time stats have been available… Read More
Tesla’s new solar energy storage facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai does what most solar power plants cannot: it stores energy from the sun during peak times for use when the grid (and its customers) needs it most. The facility is unique, with 52 MWh of storage capacity and 13 MWh of generation via its field of panels. We spoke to Tesla CTO and co-founder JB Straubel, who oversees… Read More
This week four people were accused of hacking at least 500 million Yahoo accounts, Spotify partnered with Waze and Intel bought computer vision company Mobileye. These are the top stories of the week, and you can also get this post as a weekly newsletter in your inbox, if you prefer. 1. The U.S. Department of Justice accused of two Russian FSB officers and two criminal hackers of… Read More
According to a new report from Reuters, LeEco is said to be seeking a buyer for the 49-acre swath in Silicon Valley set for the site of its future US headquarters. The Chinese electronics polymath highlighted its plans for EcoCity back in October, during its ambitious stateside debut, but a number of recent financial setbacks may have changed those plans.
The report cites anonymous sources… Read More
Some more consolidation in the world of online fashion and e-commerce. Today Walmart announced that it has acquired ModCloth, a womenswear retailer that focuses on a younger, progressive demographic and a healthier range of sizes beyond the too-often-emphasized tall, rail-thin look. Today’s news confirms reports on the acquisition from us and others earlier this week. Earlier reports… Read More
Healthcare in Africa might conjure up an image of some physician working in a remote village via Doctors without Borders but mobile technology is rapidly changing the entire continent and Y Combinator startup Kangpe Health aims to cash in by providing Africans with a platform to contact doctors remotely through their mobile devices. People access Kangpe’s platform by firing up the mobile… Read More
Amazon has been steadily pushing its way into fashion over the past several years, with investments in its own private labels – from workwear to activewear – plus increased fashion ad spending and even its own trend-obsessed TV show, Style Code Live. Now the online retailer is looking to dole out its fashion advice to the masses, too, through a new feature called… Read More
lef was a mobile authentication app that I chose for increasing my own WordPress security when I started blogging years ago — as did a million other sites. However, the app is officially and unexpectedly shutting down on June 6th; former employees will continue working on other projects at Twilio, including the Authy app and API. I spoke with Clef co-founder, B Byrne and asked a… Read More
Early investor and Executive Chairman of ClassPass Fritz Lanman will be taking over as CEO of the company, with cofounder and former CEO Payal Kadakia swapping with him for the Executive Chairman role. ClassPass, for those of you who live under a rock, is a subscription service that lets users book and access a variety of fitness classes and boutique gyms under a single ClassPass membership.… Read More
