Google’s delivering on its promise of keeping its interactive whiteboard under $6,000. Priced at $4,999, the Jamboard is just a hair more expensive than the 55-inch version of Cisco’s Sparkboard and considerably less so than the $8,999 Surface Hub, which was both the first of the trio to be announced and first to market when it started shipping last March.
Google’s 55-inch… Read More
Here’s some welcome news for Gmail users: Google is adding support for third-party add-ons that can integrate directly into the service. There are plenty of services that add functionality to Gmail already, of course, but they typically do that through a browser extension. With this new capability, which Google announced at its Cloud Next conference in San Francisco today, users will be… Read More
Google today announced a number of major updates to Drive, its online file storage service, which all aim to make it more useful for the company’s business and enterprise users. In addition, the company announced that Drive now has 800 million daily active users, which probably makes it the largest online file storage service in the market today. Read More
Google today announced it has acquired AppBridge, a company that specializes in helping businesses move their files and data into the Google Cloud platform. Using AppBridge, businesses can move their on-premise data to Google Drive, but the service also offers connectors for moving to Google’s platform data, email and files from Box.net, Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365 and similar services. Read More
Google announced that an entirely overhauled version of App Engine was generally available as of today. It made the announcement at Google Cloud Next being held this week in San Francisco.
App Engine is Google’s platform-as-a-service for building application backends without having to worry about maintaining a complex infrastructure.
The big news is that App Engine now supports any… Read More
New York-based Simplifeye thinks it can improve the productivity of the people who work in your doctor’s or dentist’s office by making patient information more easily available. The twist? It’s doing so by putting that information on wearables like the Apple Watch. Read More
Google’s messaging strategy can be confusing, but if there’s one thing that’s clear after today’s Cloud Next keynote, it’s that the company is doubling down on the idea that Hangouts is its enterprise product and Allo/Duo are its consumer communications apps. Read More
This is a pivotal week for Google Cloud Platform. As it hosts its annual Google Cloud Next Conference in San Francisco, it will offer the usual lineup of speakers, customer testimonials and product announcements one would expect at this type of event, but the broader and more challenging task is showing the world that it is ready to take on the enterprise. Read More
Firebase, the mobile app development platform Google acquired in 2014, is getting a major update at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco today. The general theme here is that Firebase is moving closer to the Google Cloud platform. It’s adding support for Google Cloud Functions, for example, and is getting support for all the storage options the Google Cloud Platform now offers. Read More
After a couple of stops and starts – and some concerns – media player software maker Plex is opening up its online service known as Plex Cloud to all paying Plex users. The service, which was first introduced into private beta in September, eliminates the need for an always-on PC or other network-attached piece of hardware in order to use the Plex media player software for… Read More
Why should you trust an advertising giant with the most sensitive personal data you possess: aka your medical records? That’s the hugely sticky issue Google-owned DeepMind is facing as it seeks to embed itself into the UK’s healthcare space — a big push publicly announced in February last year. Read More
At its Cloud Next event in San Francisco, Google today announced the beta of a new pricing option for virtual machines on its Google Compute Platform. These new committed-use discounts lock you into a one- or three-year commitment. You decide how many cores and how much memory you want to buy in bulk for those years, but you can then distribute that allotment between machines at will. In… Read More
Today at Google Cloud Next in San Francisco, the company announced three new regions for its Google Cloud Platform. The Netherlands, Montreal and California are set to join the rapidly growing list of host locations. The move benefits users by allowing more flexibility for where users keep their resources. Being able to utilize additional local infrastructure can decrease latency and… Read More
Words cannot express my excitement, but they’ll have to do. Brittany Packnett, VP of National Community Alliances at Teach For America and co-founder of social justice organization Campaign Zero, social justice activist will be joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt New York in May. I first heard Packnett speak at the Obama administration’s South by South Lawn festival at the White… Read More
Yesterday was just the beginning of Google’s Cloud Next conference. The company talked about the vision for Google Cloud. Today will be all about product announcements that are going to make your life easier as a developer. At 9 AM PT/12 PM ET/5 PM GMT, you’ll be able to watch Google introduce all those new features live. Today, you can expect to see Urs Hölzle, Prabhakar Raghavan… Read More
Ford’s still keen on its mission of delivering a fleet of self-driving vehicles in operation by 2021, but their remain significant technical hurdles to overcome between now and then. Ford’s Chief Program Engineer for Autonomous Vehicle Development Chris Brewer detailed some of the biggest challenges his team needs to take on to ensure its self-driving cars can take the road… Read More
A new generation of tech-enabled startups are beginning to reimagine how students finance their education. Higher ed’s transformation is fueling a convergence of fintech and edtech that aims to blur the line between learning and earning — and will force students, colleges and financial institutions to think differently about return on education investment. Read More
Kidizen, a marketplace for secondhand children’s apparel, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding, the company announced today. The funding was led by Chicago-based Origin Ventures, who backed the startup following its over 100 percent year-over-year growth in 2016, which has allowed the business to reach over a quarter million registered users across the U.S. Also participating in… Read More
After the vacation marketplace Airbnb last year filed SEC forms raising $555.5 million, today the company filed a new form D that has closed off its Series F with an additional $447.8 billion, bringing the total to over $1 billion – or $1,003,312,065 billion to be exact. Techcrunch has confirmed with sources close to the company that it is now valued at $31 billion.
Note: the $31… Read More
RealConnex, a four-year-old, Miami and New York-based platform connecting real estate professionals to capital, investments, and services, has raised $3.5 million in strategic funding led by Silver Portal Capital, a San Diego-based real estate investment and merchant banking firm. The round is part of a much bigger trend of startups working to change how properties are built, bought, and… Read More
