Fintech startup Revolut just added a nifty bill splitting feature. You can now tap on a Revolut expense and request money from your Revolut contacts without having to use a calculator. Swipe on a transaction, hit the split bill button and select your contacts. Other users receive a push notification saying that your friend is asking for some money. When you open the app, you’ll see… Read More
Bunkr wanted to build a PowerPoint killer, making it much faster to build beautiful, interactive presentations. But the startup couldn’t attract millions and millions of users, so Synthesio is acquiring Bunkr for an undisclosed amount. The technology will live on and be integrated into Synthesio. Synthesio is a social media monitoring and analytics platform. Big companies use Synthesio… Read More
The rise in on-demand services from the likes of Uber, Lyft and Postmates is fuelling a new workforce of freelancers in the service industry who are not tied to single places of employment and can work hours that are more suitable to them. Now a similar kind of flexibility is finding its way into the world of hourly work, too. Shiftgig — a startup that has built a mobile platform… Read More
It was cold and pouring outside as the Uber pulled up at 180 Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. Inside, a man dressed all in black offered to take my jacket and umbrella as he ushered me through the clinical white lobby to a set of chairs, handing me a bottle of VOSS. I scanned the room, eyeing a bunch of connected fitness tools and fancy skin serums on a glass table in the front,… Read More
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has upgraded its Compute Module which is designed for embedded computing and industrial users wanting to produce customized products powered by the microprocessor, such as large-format smart displays. Read More
Station F is better known as the world’s biggest startup campus. Based in Paris, the huge historical monument is going to have 3,000 desks for tech companies of all kinds. This morning, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg came to Paris to announce that Facebook is going to be one of Station F’s launch partners. Here are all the details. “We talked a lot with this ecosystem and a lot… Read More
Timekit, a Danish startup that offers a developer-friendly online booking platform, has closed $1.7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Connect Ventures, with participation from a group of rather noteworthy angel investors. Read More
India-based Practo, a startup that helps consumers locate doctors and healthcare information, has closed a $55 million Series D funding round that will fuel expansion into more emerging markets worldwide. Read More
Yesterday after the Steelers upset the Chiefs in an AFC playoff game, Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown decided to go on Facebook Live from the locker room to celebrate with his fans. And the fans loved it – he went live for 17 minutes and had almost 900,000 views within just a few hours, before the video was deleted. A player using technology to celebrate directly with his fans… Read More
Just a day after it opened an augmented reality lab, China’s internet giant Baidu has beefed up on its AI talent after it announced the hiring of former Microsoft executive Qi Lu as COO. Read More
3D printed plastics tend to remain pretty stable over time. For example, your 3D-printed Yoda won’t turn into a Chewbacca head without some severe plastic trauma… until now. Scientists at MIT have created a 3D printing technique that allows you to change the polymers in an object after printing. This means you can grow or shrink and object, change its color, and even change its… Read More
Scott Jordan never meant to make clothes. He was a lawyer by trade and wanted something he could wear to keep his Walkman from snagging on doorknobs. A few iterations later he invented the SCOTTeVEST, a vest with loads of pockets and secret channels for headphones and other cables. Now, after more than a decade in the business, he believes that while our clothing might seem more high-tech,… Read More
A startup called StorePower wants to take a bite out of the grocery delivery business by giving supermarkets an alternative to working with courier marketplaces like Instacart, Postmates, Amazon Fresh or Google Express. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of early-stage funding from Exigent Capital and individual angels, according to co-founder and CEO Richard Demb.… Read More
On December 7, 1972, NASA’s Apollo 17 mission took off under the command of Gene Cernan. Four days later, the crew touched down on the lunar surface. It was Cernan’s third and final trip to space — and, as it would turn out, the final time to date that NASA would send a team to walk on the moon. For all the seemingly buttoned-down operations of a government organization… Read More
Chromadex, the sole supplier of anti-aging startup Elysium Health‘s two main product ingredients pterostilbene and Nicotinamide Riboside (NR), is suing the startup for failure to make payments on those ingredients and for breach of a trademark and royalties agreement. According to a document on Chromadex’s website, dated December 29, 2016, Elysium “made… Read More
A number of consumers report they’re unable to get a refund for their subscription to AT&T’s recently launched streaming service, DirecTV Now – something they’ve requested after being unhappy with the new service’s performance. According to several postings on AT&T’s official forums, customers found the only way to get help was through a… Read More
Chinese search giant Baidu is looking to further entrench itself in the world of augmented reality, announcing today that it is establishing an AR lab to research and build experiences that more tightly integrate the digital experiences we have on our devices with the world around us.
The institution is the fourth such lab to be established under the Baidu Research division, joining the… Read More
Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics in business and science. Developers and industry analysts are all-in, building castles in the sky with tales of an impending AI “awakening.” In preparation for this sea change, Elon Musk and Sam Altman founded OpenAI, a nonprofit with the dual mission of ensuring that AI stays safe and its benefits are widely and evenly distributed. Read More
Twitter is rolling out a new feature designed to increase the amount of visual content in users’ timelines and encourage more tweets and replies: it’s prompting users who have just updated their profile picture to post a hashtagged tweet about the change. The tweet will be appended with #NewProfilePic, which can then be seen by all the users’ Twitter followers.… Read More
