With a global presence that already spans more than 450 cities worldwide, it isn’t often that Uber expands into new countries, but today the U.S. ride-sharing giant drove into Bangladesh. Read More
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably pretty tough getting the public to notice your new browser. Most internet users are pretty set in their ways at this point. There are some pretty good options out there, and really, switching is a pain once you’ve got everything set to your liking. Launched last year by an ex-Opera chief exec, Vivaldi is targeted at power… Read More
As part of Code.org’s Hour of Code program, Disney is releasing “Moana: Wayfinding with Code,” a free online tutorial to teach kids the basics of computer science. The tutorial features characters from Moana, Disney’s upcoming animated feature film. In the past, the company has created coding tutorials featuring characters from Frozen and Star Wars. Through those… Read More
Tesla and SolarCity’s union is still very fresh, but the combined companies are already highlighting what they’ve been able to accomplish even just as partners. The SolarCity blog details a project in which SolarCity power generation and Tesla Powerpack-based storage helped the small island of Ta’u in American Samoa fix its spotty power problem and cut its reliance on a… Read More
Volkswagen’s EV plans include manufacturing in North America starting in 2021, according to the company. The new production expansion is part of VW’s goal to ramp up to sales of 1 million electric vehicles globally by 2025, as electric becomes “the strategic core of the VW brand,” according to Volkswagen brand lead Herbert Diess speaking to Automotive News. Part of… Read More
With Brexit now the ‘favorite’ topic of the UK media, for good or for ill, you’d think there would be a lot of interest in whether companies are moving or staying in the UK. And, of course, there is. What is much harder to discern however is where the talent is moving, or intending to move. Especially ‘millennial’ talent which is so mobile and nomadic these days. Read More
Aye Finance, a startup that specializes in micro-loans in India, has landed $10.3 million in new funding of its own led LGT and existing investors SAIF Partners and Accion. Read More
All the work that went into creating peer-to-peer payment app Cookies isn’t disappearing forever. After filing for bankruptcy, Swedish tech company Klarna approached the team behind Cookies so that they can join another fintech company. The entire Cookies team except one co-founder is joining Klarna. I don’t think the two co-founders can work together again after the big meltdown… Read More
Israeli startup SafeDK, which offers a mobile SDK management platform to help app developers stay on top of the multiple SDKs their apps increasingly rely on, has closed $3.5 million in Series A funding. Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is on December 5-6! Grab tickets here. Today we’re delighted to say Nicole Eagan, Chief Executive Officer, Darktrace is also speaking. Nicole has led the company since 2014, and rapidly grown it into a global leader in cyber defense. Winner of ‘Woman of the Year’ award at The Cyber Security Awards 2016, Ms. Eagan has an extensive career in… Read More
The Thanksgiving edition of Crunch Report: What I’m thankful for… disappearing live video and messages in Instagram, Nutonomy hits the streets in Boston, Oracle acquires DNS provider Dyn and Ed Zitron is here to hang out on the show. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Social publishing platform Wattpad is making its biggest move into Hollywood yet thanks to a new deal with Universal Cable Productions. UCP is a TV production company owned by NBCUniversal — it’s produced shows including USA’s Mr. Robot, SyFy’s The Magicians and Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce. As a result of the deal, the company plans to develop… Read More
Say what you will about the merits of Facebook’s Internet.org and Free Basics — it’s pretty cool that they’re building a huge, solar-powered, laser-shooting drone to deliver it. But a “structural failure” that occurred on the Aquila’s first test flight may be more serious than Facebook made it out to be: The NTSB is conducting an investigation,… Read More
IBM today announced that it is launching four new data centers in the U.K. This brings IBM’s total data center footprint in the U.K. to six, in addition to 16 other locations across Europe. This is yet another example of the company’s increasing infrastructure investment. The first of these new U.K. locations in Fareham will go online in December, with the other three U.K.… Read More
DeepMind Health, the division of the Google-owned AI company that’s focused on building links to healthcare providers to drive the application of machine learning algorithms for preventative medicine, has inked a fresh data-sharing agreement with the NHS Royal Free Hospital Trust in London. Read More
Everyone talks about rooms being an underutilized asset in the hospitality industry. But what about meeting space? Almost all four- to five-star hotels, even boutique ones, have at least one meeting room. These can be 10-person conference rooms or 1,000-person banquet halls, but the concept is the same — it’s an empty space that the hotel wants business people to rent. But the… Read More
Remember 2012, when we called it the “Twitter Election” due to Obama’s skill in exploiting the fledgling platform? It seems almost quaint now. 2016 will be remembered as the election where the power of Twitter was revealed in full as a platform that can enable an individual with little formal organization to bypass media institutions and speak directly to a populace all the… Read More
The latest in soft robotics and shrinking sensors enables limbs and digits with ever-increasing levels of sensation and realism. At the same time, 3D printing is making it possible to bring sophisticated designs to the underprivileged and geographically isolated. Po is a company pursuing the latter goal, making custom prostheses for people who might otherwise have never gotten anything at all. Read More
Google today announced that it has acquired Qwiklabs, a hands-on learning platform for those who want to become more familiar with operating cloud environments and writing applications that run on them. Qwiklabs, which launched in 2012, has only focused on teaching skills for Amazon’s AWS platform so far. Given AWS’ dominance in the marketplace, that made perfect sense. Amazon… Read More
