Mobile calling app Viber is the latest tech company to offer help to those affected by President Trump’s immigration and travel ban. This morning, the company announced it would indefinitely waive the fees for calls to landlines or mobile numbers between the U.S. and the seven countries impacted by the travel ban, including Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Similar… Read More
Car2go is making a significant change to its car-sharing operation in North America, which will see its fleet of short-term rental vehicles made up of mostly Mercedes-Benz vehicles by the end of this year. The company is rolling out 2017 Mercedes-Benz CLA and GLAs in cities including Austin, Portland, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. to begin with, with plans to expand to more… Read More
Starbucks is embracing the trend towards voice-based computing with the launch of a new feature in its mobile app called My Starbucks barista, which allows customers to order and pay for their food and drinks just by speaking. This includes being able to modify their drink order, as if they were speaking with a barista in real life. Additionally, the company is launching a skill for the… Read More
As anticipated, wearable leader Fitbit kicked off the week by announcing a six-percent reduction in global work force, following disappointing fourth quarter financials.
The company will go into greater detail on today’s earnings call, but a preliminary statement issued this morning details the loss of 110 jobs, as part of a “reorganization of its business” designed to… Read More
Google is celebrating civil rights leader Fred Korematsu with its Google Doodle today, on the day that would’ve marked his 98th birthday. Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, to Japanese immigrants. He went into hiding when U.S. President Roosevelt issued an executive order sending people of Japanese descent living in the U.S. to internment camps. Korematsu went into hiding instead… Read More
As the tech world continues its strong opposition to the executive order that has restricted entry to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries, it appears the Trump administration is gearing up for chapter two. According to a report in Bloomberg today, the Trump administration has drafted another immigration executive order, this one aimed at overhauling work visas such as… Read More
After spending 2016 in Brooklyn, TechCrunch is returning to Manhattan for Disrupt NY 2017. For this year’s show, we’ll be taking over the beautiful Pier 36, a massive, state-of-the-art sports and entertainment facility right on the East River. Pier 36 hosts 700,000 visitors per year, and has been home to some major events like the 2015 Pandora holiday concert, the 2012… Read More
SpaceX hosted a hyperloop pod design test competition at its Hawthorne headquarters this past weekend, where student teams got the chance to run their pod designs in low-pressure environments in a test track for the first time. There were a number of teams competing, with 30 in total selected to come down for the trials, but only three were actually able to perform runs this weekend, since… Read More
The world’s first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1555. Some 400 years later, Cafe X is putting a twist on that old barista model. Opening in San Francisco today, the startup is opting instead to have a large robotic arm craft your caffeinated potions. Founder Henry Hu noticed that baristas spent a majority of their time moving cups around while making espresso… Read More
There’s a field full of flower delivery services to choose from these days from the old school 1-800-flowers and FTD to startups popping up over the last few years like BloomThat, Farmgirl Flowers, UrbanStems and The Bouqs. That last one just raised $24 million in Series C financing, bringing the total now to $43 million. The Bouqs doesn’t quite roll off the tongue but that fresh… Read More
Southeast Asia’s Grab is taking a leaf out of the Uber playbook and bringing in a prominent insider to get ahead in its most important market. Uber popularized the approach of nabbing execs like ex-Obama advisor David Plouffe and various others, and that’s the thesis behind ride-sharing firm Grab’s latest hire: the former chief of Indonesia’s National Police.… Read More
UberEATS, Uber’s on-demand food delivery service, is launching a breakfast offering in London, as it continues to compete with the likes of Deliveroo and Amazon, and ‘buy and deliver anything’ services such as Jinn and Quiqup. Read More
Vodafone has confirmed that it is in discussions over a merger deal that could create India’s largest telecom operator.
In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, the telecom giant said it is in talks with Aditya Birla Group, the group that owns Idea Cellular, over a deal.
“Any merger would be effected through the issue of new shares in Idea to Vodafone and would result in… Read More
DraftKings was just approved for a Controlled Skill Games License from the Malta Gaming Authority, which is the entity that runs gaming in Malta – a small island nation south of Italy. While this may not sound like a big deal, (especially considering Malta has a population of under 500,000 people) the nation is part of the European Union, meaning DraftKings can now expand into some other… Read More
Google has created its largest humanitarian fund to date in response to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. The search giant’s newest ‘crisis campaign’ is $4 million in size. The money will be donated to four organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and UN… Read More
For the authorities, encryption is a calamity. Where once they could pry open drawers to find incriminating letters, or force a company to reveal private records, now everything depends on the owner’s willingness to allow their data to be decrypted. So since they can’t go through the front door, they have asked repeatedly for a back door. But what exactly is a backdoor, and why… Read More
The ubiquity of big data is such that Gartner dropped it from their Hype Cycle of Emergent Technologies back in 2015. Across sectors, businesses are scrambling to make every function “data driven,” and there’s no shortage of firms lining up to help them. The big data analytics industry is worth $122 billion — and growing. Read More
Tech executives are offering to match donations to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) following the enactment of an executive order banning entry to refugees and visa holders from seven countries. As multiple executives and CEOs of technology companies have come out in opposition of what’s essentially being called an immigration ban, some have chosen to do so by offering to… Read More
I’ve advised recruiting operations at close to 300 startups, ranging from a five-person team at Scalyr to a several-hundred-person team at Gusto. Most startups share a common theme: Technical recruiting is often a top business priority — and every startup wants to improve its recruiting operations. Read More
Uber has apologized today for promoting surge pricing to and from JFK during yesterday’s protest and taxi strike. After the enactment of an executive order barring refugees and visa holders from seven countries from entering the U.S., protests gathered at JFK International and the NY Taxi Workers Alliance called for a stop on pickups from the airport. Uber said that riders could go to… Read More
