Google and Comcast announced a new deal this morning that will see the YouTube application installed on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 set-top boxes nationwide later this year. The integration will allow X1 users to launch the app by saying “YouTube” into the X1 voice remote, as well as browse featured content on YouTube, search the entire library, including by voice, and sign into… Read More
With a new $50 million investment from private equity giant KKR, IT service management company Cherwell Software becomes the latest business in the firm’s growing tech portfolio. The investment, from KKR’s $711 million Next Generation Technology Fund, is the firm’s fifth deal since closing the fund last December. Cherwell Software, a Colorado Springs-based company, makes… Read More
Mobile World Congress kicked off over the weekend with press conferences from Samsung, Sony, LG and Motorola. But all anyone seems to care about is a 17-year-old device. A reboot. A candy bar feature phone whose main selling point is its ability to play Snake, eclipsing BlackBerry’s own nostalgia-themed KeyOne smartphone. That feels like as bold an indictment of the mobile industry… Read More
Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch announced this morning that it will now sell games directly on its platform – a not entirely surprising expansion for the service where developers are already taking advantage of the site’s social community to get the word out about their games, and engage fans. Games will go on sale this spring, says Twitch, but did not give an… Read More
The world of mobile development is a hairy one. You can code things yourself and hurt your brain on React Native or you can use a drag-and-drop editor and get locked into one platform forever. But now app development house Kinetise is offering the best of both worlds. Kinetise, who I’ve talked about for years as an interesting alternative to coding your own Android and iOS apps, came… Read More
Low-Earth orbit is a prime candidate for explosive commercial growth, but it’s also a space where the risk of actual explosions resulting from debris impact is a legitimate concern for businesses focused on the opportunity. That’s the problem LeoLabs aims to address, a startup spun out of SRI International to detect, map and help avoid collisions with debris and objects floating… Read More
Developing a software that tracks user behavior across apps and websites, and generates targeted marketing emails for those users has garnered the San Diego-based technology company Cordial $6 million in new funding. The San Diego-based company is founded by a team of longtime email marketing professionals and was backed by Upfront Ventures in this Series A round. The company is also a… Read More
While Google is using MWC to show off some of its advances in native apps on mobile devices — specifically in chat apps — the world’s biggest chat app company is doing something completely different. Today, Facebook announced that it is building a 770-kilometer (500-mile) fiber backhaul network in Uganda, in partnership with India’s Airtel and wholesale provider BCS… Read More
Samsung is set to announce the Galaxy S8 smartphone in late March, but the two videos and a couple of images embedded here appear to show working units. The videos show the phone’s refined design. The curved screen of the S7 remains as does the 3.5mm headphone port. The phone looks very similar to its predecessor though it’s missing the physical and capacitive buttons found on… Read More
The news happens before the convention really starts. That’s the rule of thumb for covering tech shows. The big companies scramble all over one another to make their announcements at overlapping press conferences in the days leading up to an event. Mobile World Congress only just opened, but we’ve already seen all the big news from Samsung, Sony, LG and Motorola, among others.… Read More
Mobile OS maker Jolla, whose Sailfish platform remains one of the few smartphone alternatives in play these days, has signed an exclusive license to a Chinese consortium to develop a Sailfish-based OS for the country. Read More
Anyone who’s seen Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son give a keynote speech will know he rarely sticks to the standard industry conference playbook. And his turn on the stage at Mobile World Congress this morning was no different, with Son making like Eldon Tyrell and telling delegates about his personal belief in a looming computing Singularity… Read More
Ford might have just solved a question that puzzled the automotive industry for eons: Where does one store a travel pillow in a car? On the floor? In the trunk? In an NPR tote bag in the backseat? Nope. Ford wants to store a travel pillow in the head rest, of course. This new patent filing by Ford illustrates a secret compartment built-into a vehicle’s head rest. There’s a… Read More
When Microsoft launched the Surface line back in 2012, its combination of a tablet and keyboard cover (married with a smart kickstand), was innovative. With it, Microsoft surely hoped to kickstart a bit of innovation in what had become a rather stale market for Windows laptops and an almost non-existing market for Windows tablets. Instead of innovation, though, what we’re seeing now is… Read More
Open Garden, the company behind the FireChat offline messenger, is now the mesh networking tech behind its apps available for all developers. The company today announced the launch of its MeshKit SDK, which enables developers to easily integrate peer-to-peer connectivity into their apps, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The classic use case for this is chat apps, but it also works… Read More
For all of its consumer electronics prowess, mobile has always been a tough proposition for Sony. The Android market is overcrowded for one, and the company hasn’t really done all that much to set itself apart from the pack — save for one key saving grace: really great cameras. Imaging is once again the standout feature on the trio of Xperia handsets announced this morning at… Read More
The next decade will be one of immense change. The future of humanity will be decided – do we go to space or stay put, do we survive the changes coming? Further, many establishments will die. The publishing industry, burdened and drowned by the long tail, will sink. Music and movies will take new shapes, shapes as revolutionary as the talkie was to the zoetrope. Basically,… Read More
So this isn’t the Oscar moment that everyone’s talking about, but it’s also kind of big deal: Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman, both distributed by Amazon Studios, won a collective three Academy Awards tonight. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even got a shoutout in host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue. Manchester by the Sea won for Best Actor (Casey Affleck, who won… Read More
Foxconn is taking over SoftBank’s Asia-based tech investment fund. The manufacturing giant, which is responsible for producing Apple’s iPhone among many other tech products, has agreed to buy a majority 54.5 percent stake in SoftBank Asia Capital in exchange for $600 million, according to a filing. The deal is scheduled to go through March 1, after which time SoftBank Asia… Read More
Ahead of Snap’s eagerly awaited IPO, Line, one of the U.S. tech IPO highlights of 2016, has doubled down on sister service and Snapchat clone Snow. Line and Snow both share the same parent company — Naver — but the two firms have increasingly become financially entwined. Line bought up 25 percent of Snow last September for $45 million, and now it is nearly doubling its… Read More
