Neverthink might just be the most ‘lean back’ online video experience yet. The site (and as of today, iOS app) takes content sourced from YouTube, Reddit and elsewhere and re-packages it into non-skippable channels. The result is a TV-like experience that, say its creators, is more “on-demand distraction” than on-demand video. Read More
Behold. The Samsung Galaxy S8 a month before you’re supposed to see it. This image comes from professional leaker, Evan Blass, who is responsible for a good chunk of the mobile phone leaks. The image here shows a redesigned Galaxy phone. It lacks physical buttons and still has the wrap-around screen of the Galaxy S7 edge. The bezel is smaller than past models, taking up just a tiny bit… Read More
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. After a slow start, Apple Pay is now dominating its home country, the United States, but the same can’t be said of China where it is up against a different set of challenges. Data from Boston Retail Partners shows that Apple Pay is now accepted by 36 percent of merchants in… Read More
There can be no hype without a unicorn. China’s newest startup money pit — bicycle rentals on-demand — now has its first billion-dollar valued company.
The industry has sucked in more than $300 million from investors this year alone — that’s counting just one company — and now Ofo has become the first in the space to reach the much-coveted $1 billion… Read More
Chinese travel site Qunar is all set to delist from the NASDAQ after it completed its sale to private equity firm Ocean Management. The deal was first announced last October and today it went through having gained shareholder approval earlier this week. The transaction values Qunar, which is backed by Baidu, at around $4.44 billion. The firm raised $167 million from its IPO in November… Read More
The phrase “3-D printer” typically brings to mind devices that churn out plastic objects like jewelry, toys, hardware prototypes or even prosthetics. Now, a startup building a 3-D food printer, BeeHex, has raised $1 million in seed funding to launch its first product, a pizza printer called the Chef 3D. Initially, BeeHex wanted to develop a printer that would be able to make a… Read More
AWS outage is affecting a lot of websites, like Quora and Giphy, humans are watching about 1 billion hours a day of YouTube, Hyperloop could be coming to India and Lux Capital closes a $400 million fund. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
The UK government is due to publish its long awaited Digital Strategy later today, about a year later than originally slated. Existing delays having been compounded by the shock of Brexit. Drafts of the strategy framework seen by TechCrunch suggest its scope and ambition vis-a-vis the digital technologies has been pared back and repositioned vs earlier formulations of the plan. Read More
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has penned an open letter of apology for a heated exchange he had with his Uber Black driver back in January about the impact of competitive pricing. Kalanick was shown in a newly surfaced video arguing with driver Fawzi Kamel over Uber’s business model and what effect it has had on the driver’s pay. Kamel tells Kalanick in the video that Uber has cost… Read More
A newly published video clip of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick may offer the world’s first glimpse into his thinking about businesses that compete with his ride-sharing juggernaut. Read More
The Guardian published a new interview with Tesla engineer and current employee AJ Vandermeyden on Tuesday, wherein Vandermeyden lays out what she sees as a history of discriminatory treatment in a male-dominated work environment. Vandermeyden’s new statements were made in the context of a suit she filed last year against Tesla, and follow major revelations at Uber of systemic… Read More
Google has quietly launched a new video conferencing application called Meet by Google Hangouts, which is designed for HD video meetings. The web and mobile application appears to be the latest addition to Google’s lineup of business products known as G Suite, though the product page on the G Suite website listed in the app’s description page on the App Store is not… Read More
As questions around the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia build, at least one former member of the president’s inner circle appears to have gotten the DNC treatment. Read More
After a year of rumors, YouTube is finally drawing back the curtain on its latest play for entertainment industry domination — a live TV service.
At the company’s Playa Vista offices, a crowd of roughly 100 journalists settled into tables and chairs arrayed in the company’s hangar-like foyer to the strains of “Video Killed the Radio Star” and “Coffee and… Read More
If you tried to apply to Disrupt NY’s Startup Battlefield today, you might have noticed you hit a wall. We’re having some technical difficulties right now with the website, and have decided to extend the deadline to Thursday, March 2, at 12 pm PT. We’ll be sure to spread the word when the issue is resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience. Startup Battlefield is the… Read More
Social networks may be the most valuable and durable types of businesses powered by “network effects,” the phenomenon of products or services becoming more powerful the more people use them. This is one reason the imminent IPO of social/mobile app Snap, which thrives on network effects, is being so closely watched. Another is that Snap represents the first credible threat to Facebook. Read More
We talked with Kevin Chou, co-founder and CEO of the gaming company Kabam, about his own both stressful and euphoric experience in running a gaming startup for roughly a decade before selling most of its assets in December to South Korea’s Netmarble Games for a reported $700 million. Read More
Dyson will open a second campus focused on research and development in the U.K., close to its Malmesbury tech HQ in nearby Cotswolds. The planned expansion at home follows the recent announcement of a new Singapore tech center, which opened officially earlier this month. Read More
Amazon’s S3 web-based storage service is experiencing widespread issues, leading to service that’s either partially or fully broken on websites, apps and devices upon which it relies. The AWS offering provides hosting for images for a lot of sites, and also hosts entire websites, and app backends including Nest.
The S3 outage is due to “high error rates with S3 in… Read More
Disrupt NY is fast approaching, and the agenda is shaping up to be a real doozy. Alongside speakers like Handy’s Oisin Hanrahan, Managed By Q’s Dan Teran, WayUp’s Liz Wessel, Ford’s Raj Nair and AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, we’re also pleased to host Glossier’s Emily Weiss and Outdoor Voices’ Tyler Haney on the Disrupt NY stage. Read More
