Electric cars and hybrid vehicles can be incredibly quiet – so quiet that a populace used to cars that make noise can be hurt when sharing space with them. New NHTSA standards for automakers aim to help fix that with audible alerts hat are required on all new hybrid and electric going forward beginning September 1, 2019. The new sound requirements applies across the U.S., and should… Read More
Samsung is giving customers a new incentive to use Samsung Pay, its mobile payments product. The company released Samsung Rewards today, which is a program that provides points whenever a user uses their Samsung Pay for a transaction. The points gathered through the program can then be exchanged for rewards including gift cards, Samsung products, and more from various U.S. retailers. The… Read More
CBS is bringing 360 degree videos to the big screen. The company today announced the launch of new apps for the Android TV and Amazon Fire TV which will add the new, more immersive video format to CBSN’s news coverage, kicking off with a 360-degree behind-the-scenes look into the filming of a 60 Minutes episode. The episode in question is one that involves looking for gorillas in… Read More
Apple announced this morning that its payments service Apple Pay will now support the ability to make donations to nonprofits, starting today in the U.S. This includes both Apple Pay on the web, where it can be integrated into websites’ checkout flow, as well as within mobile applications. The changes are rolling out just ahead of the holidays, something participating nonprofits hope… Read More
Google updates the world monthly on the progress of its self-driving car project, and this month’s update includes the usual stats, like over 2,230,175 miles driven in autonomous mode, as well as an explainer on how the cars handle a tricky task: multi-point turning. The three-point turn is a boilerplate part of any driving test, and one that can prove quite challenging depending on… Read More
Meet the Lima Ultra, a tiny device that lets you create a personal cloud and control your data more easily. Think about it as a Dropbox alternative with data sitting on a hard drive in your home. The Lima Ultra is a new and improved version of the original Lima. It’s more powerful and you can expect a big performance boost. The idea behind the Lima Ultra is still the same. It’s a… Read More
Microsoft today is rolling out a new tool for business owners using Office 365 and Outlook called Customer Service Manager, a lightweight CRM for companies that need to track their customer interactions and history, but aren’t yet ready for a more robust platform like Dynamics 365. The new tool lets businesses track tasks and deals in progress directly in Outlook, and will pop-up… Read More
Nutmeg, the U.K. digital wealth manager (and an early entrant into the space), has picked up £30 million in further funding, bringing the total raised to just shy of £60 million over the last 5 years. Read More
It’s perhaps not widely known that Uber has Russian investors. But it does, in the form of Russian bank Sberbank, which invested as part of its first international fund a few years ago. Sberbank has now announced its second 10-year venture fund put at US$200-250M in size. Portfolio companies in the first fund included Uber and eToro. Unlike the first fund this one isn’t financed… Read More
Verizon today has made another acquisition to build out its IoT business: the carrier has purchased LQD WiFi, a developer of outdoor interactive displays that provide WiFi connectivity along with news, emergency alerts and community information. They also act as sensors collecting crowd, weather and other data. The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. LQD WiFi, based out of… Read More
Wireless VR will do a lot to help the tech become more viable, since dealing with your heavy cable umbilical on Oculus and HTC Vive right now is a pain. MIT has created a new wireless communication system designed specifically for VR that could unburden us for truly immersive VR experiences. MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab came up with “MoVR” as a way… Read More
The resurgence of Q&A is upon us.
Entering the ring with Justin Kan’s newly announced Whale, Yam is looking to offer a video-based question and answer platform that puts focus on story-telling.
The idea for Yam came when founder Michael Cho was using Reddit for an AMA about a near-fatal plane crash he was in.
“Some questions are better answered with video,” said Cho. Read More
Pan-European medical booking platform Doctena just got a little more pan-European. Already operational in Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland, the company has acquired Germany’s Doxter — which it claims is the number 1 player in Germany. Read More
Google today announced the launch of a new version of its Google Play Music service, in an effort to better compete with rivals like Spotify and Apple Music in terms of personalization. Like the other top streaming services, Google Play Music will now cater to its audience’s unique tastes and interests in order to suggest songs you want to hear, as well as match you with the right… Read More
Are you at least as good as Matt Damon when it comes to surviving the harsh Martian landscape? You can find out tomorrow, when The Martian VR Experience lands on HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. The collaboration between Fox’s Innovation Lab, RSA Films and The Virtual Reality Company attempts to replicate the plot of The Martian, in a first-person immersive virtual reality experience. You… Read More
The Touch Bar is an interesting proposition. Part innovation, part work around. The technology is Apple’s attempt to embrace a new form of input while continuing to eschew touchscreen on its computers. I was mostly pleasantly surprised by the technology, in terms of its capability, versatility and responsiveness, but for now, it’s not exactly a game changer.
The Touch Bar is an… Read More
There are plenty of coworking spaces out there, but while the like of WeWork and TechHub focus on major capital cities, others have seen a fertile space emerge in developing economies. Thus coworking network Talent Garden has landed a €12M funding round from investors including Endeavor Catalyst (supported by LinkedIn), 500Startups and Italy’s largest investment bank, Tamburi… Read More
Amazon is beefing up its Home Services business — a marketplace rival to the likes of Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack and Handy for helping people find and hire contractors for everything from plumbers to at-home reflexologists. Today, the company added 20 more metro areas, one of its most significant expansions of Home Services since launching in March 2015, and bringing… Read More
The next Spectacles vending machine location is on again, with a little under 24 hours to go as of this writing on Monday morning. The next location is still a secret, of course, but the first two have been LA and Big Sur in that order, so there’s precedent for both a big city or a small town scenic spot.
Snapchat’s launch strategy with the Spectacles, a pair of video-capturing… Read More
Cray has a new supercomputer called the XC50, the successor to its XC40 model and the first supercomputer from the company that can deliver one petaflop of performance (at peak) in a single cabinet. The XC50 supports the NVDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerator, as well as nex-gen Intel Xeon and Xeon Phi processors, and is targeted at uses including deep learning algorithms, which Cray says are… Read More
