Facebook wants its users to upload and consume more videos, and it’s making a couple of changes to the way that it displays and distributes those videos. Today at CODE Media, Facebook VP of partnerships Dan Rose said the company would also launch a series of apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV. Read More
The adorable little Smart cars you see on North American roads from here on out will likely be primarily electric, as the company has decided to cease sales of its gas-powered Fortwo and Fortwo Cabrio in the U.S. and Canada from 2017 on.
It sounds like the decision has less to do with overwhelming demand for electric Smart cars, however, and more to do with the North American market’s… Read More
Twitter earlier this month announced a series of changes aimed at silencing abuse on its network, but a recent change to its service – which was quickly reversed following user feedback – indicates the company still doesn’t have a good handle on how to handle online harassment. Via a tweet posted yesterday by the Twitter Safety account, the company announced it would no… Read More
Etsy just announced what it’s calling its first marketplace in 11 years — Etsy Studio, where businesses can sell supplies to other Etsy users.
CEO Chad Dickerson told me that while craft supplies were already available through the existing Etsy website, “It was a category that we didn’t focus on.” Then, about a year ago, the team started to work on the idea of… Read More
Entoro Group today announced that it has acquired OfferBoard, a company that removes barriers from the process of raising capital. OfferBoard isn’t AngelList nor FundersClub. It’s a platform designed to make crowdfunding work for growth capital. But instead of tech startups, the company supports general solicitation for multimillion dollar financing projects in spaces like… Read More
Disrupt NY 2017 is just a few short months away. Soon, thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and other tech enthusiasts will make their way from around the world to Manhattan’s Pier 36 for the best startup show in the city that never sleeps. Will you and your budding international startups be one of them? One of our favorite things about Disrupt is the country pavilions,… Read More
Google today announced the beta launch of Cloud Spanner, a new globally distributed database service for mission-critical applications. Cloud Spanner joins Google’s other cloud-based database services, like Bigtable, Cloud SQL and the Cloud Datastore, but with the crucial difference of offering developers the best of both traditional relational databases and NoSQL databases — that… Read More
Intuition Robotics, maker of elder care assistant ElliQ, announced today that it has raised $6 million in funding from iRobot and equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. With the funding, the Jerusalem-based company plans to open an office in the Bay Area and begin testing ElliQ with senior citizens in San Francisco. Read More
As the public grows more concerned with state-sponsored hacking, Microsoft is calling on tech companies to form a so-called “Digital Geneva Convention” by promising to protect users from nation-state attacks and vowing to never mount offensive cyber attacks. Microsoft is also pushing governments around the world to establish norms for engagement in digital warfare. Microsoft… Read More
Back in 2015 we were intrigued by the launch of a brand new take on online learning. It was driven by mobile and also ‘gamed’ users into learning. That was the idea behind SmartUp.io, a mobile app which had a points-based game which would incentivize learning. It’s early implementation was clunky to say the least, and content-lite. But that hasn’t held them back.… Read More
Instapaper says today it has fully recovered from its extended outage, which caused the service to be down for over a day last week, then saw it return in a limited capacity. The popular bookmarking service, which had millions of users at the time of its acquisition by Pinterest, suffered an outage last week caused by hitting a system limit on its AWS hosted database. When the company posted… Read More
YouTube says it’s cancelling the second season of vlogger star PewDiePie’s reality show, and has booted his channel from its premium advertising program. The announcement comes shortly after news that Disney’s Maker Studios was severing ties with PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, after he posted a series of videos featuring anti-Semitic clips and… Read More
Hardware Battlefield favorite Wiivv has announced a $4 million Series A funding and an acquisition. Not too shabby for a shoe company. But remember: this isn’t just any shoe company. Founded by Shamil Hargovan the team at Wiivv is making and selling 3D-printed shoes and insoles. The company has sold 10,000 insoles already and they’re going to start shipping custom-printed shoes… Read More
Autonomous vehicle system startup Drive.ai is ready to show off its technology in use for the first time, with a video showing the company’s test vehicle making its way through the streets of Mountain View.
Other companies have shown us similar videos, of course, including GM-owned Cruise very recently, and Tesla. But Drive.ai’s demonstration is interesting because it depicts… Read More
A growing number of companies are looking at the viability of airborne, autonomous taxis as a way to ease urban congestion and transportation woes, but the city of Dubai could leapfrog those with a plan to deploy a passenger-carrying drone as early as this summer. Uber, Airbus and others are still talking about creating test vehicles that would begin transporting cargo first, but… Read More
Venture Capital is key to ensuring the digital transformation of government becomes long-term sustainable and successful reality. If we want to see an increased activity in the number of GovTech startups, then the lines of communication need to be active and open. Read More
San Francisco startup Sense.ly has raised $8 million in a Series B round of venture funding to bring its virtual nurse technology to clinics and patients of every kind. The company’s app helps physicians stay in touch with patients, and prevent readmission to the hospital. Chief Executive Officer and founder of Sense.ly, Adam Odessky describes the platform as “A cross between… Read More
Apple is finally pulling the curtains on its original TV shows. The company has revealed the first trailer for its upcoming non-scripted reality TV show called ‘Planet of the Apps’ at Recode’s Code Media conference. Based on the trailer, it looks a lot like Shark Tank with a vibe that reminds me of The Voice. The show will feature four celebrities turned judges —… Read More
Nintendo’s new Switch console is set to launch in less than a month, and easily its biggest headline launch title is Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo just announced that this debut game will also get bigger over time, with two planned DLC packs available via a season pass that will cost players an additional $20 on top of the price of the game itself. Nintendo fans might not be… Read More
