Welcome to the 2016 TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide! We’ll be rolling out a bunch of guides leading up to Christmas, hopefully making your holiday shopping a little easier. Looking for gifts for others on your list? Check out our full 2016 Gift Guide Hub. Your home could probably stand to be more connected, and it’s finally getting to the point where gadgets around the house add… Read More
Despite ongoing uncertainty for business about the impact of the UK Brexit vote to leave the European Union, London-based fintech startup GoCardless reckons the government is now signaling it recognizes the “high growth” potential of the sector. Read More
With Thanksgiving Day in full swing, many are turning to the internet to get their holiday shopping started. Adobe is tracking e-commerce transactions in real time, and it said that by 5pm Eastern time online retailers had clocked up $1.15 billion in sales, up 13.6% on a year ago. Of that, $449 million was spent on mobile devices ($322 million smartphones; $127 million tablets), a… Read More
Every big company was a lean and mean startup at one time. Now, confronted with digital disruption all around us, we’re all rushing to rekindle the entrepreneurial flame that first put our businesses on the map. Every company wants to be “innovative,” but “innovation” has become an overused buzzword that has lost its meaning. Companies should focus more on the… Read More
Virata Watches is the brain-child of Patrick Wacks from Canton, Ohio. Wacks was inspired by his favorite Formula 1 cars to create a watch as streamlined and sexy as a race car. He’s finally shipping his watches and he’s running a Kickstarter to get them out the door.
The feature I find interesting is the clever, highly-engineered case. The watches look like chunks of crystalized… Read More
Palantir — that $20 billion secretive outfit that provides government, finance, healthcare and other organizations with analytics, security and other data management solutions — has raised another $20 million in funding, according to a new SEC filing. It’s a relatively modest amount for the company. In its last fundraising, in December 2015, Palantir closed off… Read More
One of the primary reasons for Thanksgiving was always the celebration of the end of the harvest and the promise of new growth. Home gardens wilted in the first November rains and the apples and herbs died out around the ides. The land goes from oregano and blanched green bean to tan and dust and brown and the leaves cover everything in preparation for snow. I’m no outdoorsman. Our… Read More
Zvooq, a music streaming service in Russia and CIS countries backed by major Western labels, is suing Yandex for $29 million. It accuses the Russian search giant of poaching key Zvooq staff for its own music streaming service, in contravention of an NDA the two parties allegedly signed in February of this year. Zvooq, which is run out of Moscow but legally based in Cyprus, charges Yandex… Read More
Maserati was said to be looking at 2020 as the target timeframe for its first production electric vehicle, and now the company has confirmed to Autocar that a battery-powered electric drivetrain option will be made available in 2020 for its Alfieri two-seater sports car. The EV version will follow the convention fuel-based V6-powered Alfieri makes its product debut sometime in 2019. Part of… Read More
LeEco would like nothing more than to be everything to everyone. The impulse is no better demonstrated than with the company’s grand U.S. debut a few months back, which included everything from phones and flat-screen TVs to a bicycle, an electric car, a VR headset and, yes, a cameo by Michael Bay directly from the set of the latest Transformers. Of all the products unveiled during… Read More
Livestreaming 360-degree video is rarely the right way to go if you’re thinking about doing live broadcast for an event – but Verizon’s (disclaimer: Verizon owns TechCrunch via AOL) use of it to show the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade actually makes sense. Especially if you happen to have a Daydream View headset, Google’s new first-party mobile VR hardware. The… Read More
Dyson’s V8 cordless vacuum is the latest in a long line of the company’s portable category, and it has a more powerful motor that drives more suction than ever before, as the name implies. It’s also a premium-priced device, but that suction combined with its battery life and lightweight design make for a pretty unbeatable combo in the vacuum world. Right-sized power The V8… Read More
Snap, the social media company formerly known as Snapchat, has launched a Spectacles pop-up shop in NYC. Inside the store, there is a Snap Bot (a vending machine full of Spectacles). Outside the store, there is a line — a long, winding line of people who stand out in the freezing cold to buy a pair of Snapchat-capable sunglasses. Personally, I have trouble justifying standing outside in… Read More
U.S. digital health company Provata is one of several hoping to harness virtual reality’s power as an escapist medium by using it as a backdrop for guided meditations. Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6. Grab tickets here. As well as speakers and panels, we’ll be featuring some demos by some amazing tech companies. The first will be by Boston Dynamics. Yes, folks, delegates to Disrupt London will get to see one of those amazing BD robots up close and personal, almost literally in the flesh (if they had any flesh, that is). Marc Raibert,… Read More
The Hackathon at Disrupt London 2016 is so close we can almost taste it. Soon, thousands of founders, investors and tech enthusiasts will storm London’s Copper Box Arena for the best startup show in Europe. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the next wave of tickets to the hackathon is available now, and you can get your free hackathon ticket here. The hackathon kicks off at… Read More
French startup Wynd has raised a $31.7 million Series B round (€30 million) from Sodexo Ventures and Orange Digital Ventures, with Bpifrance also participating. Orange Digital Ventures had already invested in the Series A round with Alven Capital. Wynd is working on a software-as-a-service solution to replace your existing point-of-sale service that you use in your restaurant or store.… Read More
Facebook builds a censorship tool so it could not be banned from China anymore, Twitter suspends Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account, your headphones can be hacked to listen to you, MIT creates artificial muscles and Ditto is now in Pokémon GO. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Skyscanner, the Scotland-based flight search company, has been acquired by Chinese online travel giant Ctrip for £1.4 billion, or approximately $1.74 billion. Read More
