Nest is shipping a new build of the Nest app this morning, and it comes with a few new tricks. Most notably, they’re bubbling up some more computer vision smarts. With this update, Nest Aware (the company’s paid service that starts at $10 a month and lets you record footage instead of just streaming it live) will try to automatically detect doors within its view and suggest… Read More
HTC’s latest financials make for another fairly dismal read for the mobile device and VR headset maker, though — crumbs of comfort — it’s making a slightly smaller year-over-year loss. Read More
Samanage, makers of customer service software in the cloud, had a couple of major announcements today. For starters, they got a $20 million investment, and they also announced a major step: the launch of their enterprise product on the Salesforce platform. Let’s start with the funding. The round included money from Carmel Ventures, Gemini Israel Ventures, Marker LLC, Salesforce Ventures… Read More
Payoneer, a provider of payment technologies that lets vendors sell to international customers in local currencies — allowing for easier cross-border payments, is launching an API. The move lets billing companies and service providers embed payment technologies in their existing services. Software services companies are now competing globally for customers, and Payoneer allows companies… Read More
Just in time for Valentine’s Day (ugh, sorry), dating app OK Cupid is getting a makeover. Psych! Just kidding, the company is introducing a new version of its mobile app today, but OK Cupid’s full redesign won’t actually roll out until March. Though the timing of the announcement is clearly manufactured, the overhaul itself is fairly significant. In addition to getting… Read More
Soldo, the London-based fintech startup founded by Carlo Gualandri, who previously helped create Italy’s first online bank, is rolling out a new product in the U.K. today aimed at businesses who need to deploy and manage expenses across an entire company. Read More
Disney has cut ties with YouTube’s most popular star after he posted a series of videos featuring anti-Semitic clips and messages. PewDiePie has 53 million subscribers on YouTube, is part of original content network YouTube Red, and is affiliated with Disney’s MakerStudios brand, where he has his own network. But that latter relationship is now over after the Wall Street… Read More
Amazon has taken the wraps off of its own Skype competitor. Chime is a new video conferencing and communications from AWS that’s focused on business users. Beyond VoIP calling and video messaging, Chime includes virtual meetings, allowing users to host or join a remote meeting through the service. Pricing starts at $2.50 per user per month on the lowest end, with a higher tier plan… Read More
Amazon Prime has driven growth for the e-commerce company for years now. But Amazon has traditionally been cagey about disclosing too many details regarding the popular service. In a 10-K filing summarizing performance throughout 2016, the business did something that drew the attention of Wall Street analysts. It designated a category entitled “retail subscription services”… Read More
I wanted to review the 2017 Infiniti Q60 Red sports coupe, in particular its technology, because Infiniti is usually ahead of the curve when it comes to tech. This was my second test of the Q60; I’d had it in November 2016 for a few days but felt I hadn’t had the chance to explore all of its connected services. So I got another full week with it in February 2017.
The Q60 drove great. Read More
Apple is making a deeper push into producing its own stable of original TV shows, but it probably won’t compete with originals being produced by Netflix or Amazon. At the CODE Media conference today, SVP Eddy Cue explained that the company would be focused on creating content that is different from the competition and takes advantage of its music platform. Apple’s entrance… Read More
Musical.ly releases Ping Pong, a new video messenger app, PAL-V is pre-selling its flying car, Elon Musk talks about the symbiosis of mind and machine and Apple might be contemplating wireless charging for the iPhone 8. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
There was a palpable energy in downtown San Francisco today as hundreds of tech workers from LinkedIn, Cisco, Apple and other tech companies came together to talk about the plight of the American immigrant under our current administration. Read More
You don’t have to have perfect vision to enjoy VR, but brother, it helps. Otherwise you’re looking at having to worry about accommodating glasses, eye tracking not working, ocular distances maxing out and so on. Stanford researchers want to make things easier for people with vision problems to use VR, but it’s not going to be easy. Read More
Blume Ventures, an early-stage fund that’s becoming a major player in India’s burgeoning tech scene, has joined the Draper Venture Network, the investors announced on Monday. Members of the DVN collaborate on investments, share business intelligence and syndicate their deals to firms in Silicon Valley, with portfolio services provided by a local team there.
DVN claims that… Read More
It’s a tiny-but-still-annoying part of almost every meeting and phone call — once you agree to meet someone or call them, there’s still another flurry of emails as you try to decide on a time. Tech companies large and small have tried to improve the meeting process. (I’m a fan of Doodle, myself.) Now Y combinator-backed startup Meetingbird has taken a stab at it… Read More
Yik Yak crashed and burned after raising $73.5 million… then laying off most of its employees as users ditched its anonymous message board app. But now Yik Yak appears to be taking another shot at the college demographic with an app for chatting up people with the same classes, major or interest. Last week, an app called Hive appeared in the app stores. It was built by Richard Guy,… Read More
Nikon’s plan to restructure in the face of challenges to the digital imaging space has proven more costly than expected in more ways than one. A rough quarter means the company will not only miss profit expectations, but will have to buy out a thousand employees and end its DL line of compact cameras. Read More
Everyone loves being in pictures taken by a professional photographer. Because as good as our iPhone cameras are these days, there’s just no comparison to a picture taken by a professional on a high-quality DSLR. But most of us don’t often get this opportunity, because professional photographers are usually only hired for large-budget, high-profile events — not your… Read More
It’s becoming harder and harder to read the news. We’ve gone around the bend from carefully balanced op-ed pieces from clearly identified special interest parties to a president whose grasp on the truth is tenuous, at best. Media accelerator Matter has thrown down the gauntlet and is challenging startups to load up their slingshots of truth and go to town. Read More
