Vevo, YouTube’s biggest competitor when it comes to music videos, has today unveiled a new tool that lets users create GIFs from Vevo’s massive video library. With more than 230,000 videos, Vevo offers users a wide variety of content featuring musicians/celebrities. Giphy, the platform for all things GIF, says that 80 percent of its usage is around GIFs featuring celebrities, so… Read More
Looking for a piece of wall art that doubles as lighting for your home? You’re in luck. Aurora, launched by Canadian smart-lighting startup Nanoleaf, is a set of smart LED panels designed to go on your wall. The panels are triangular (about 9″ on each side), and can be connected to basically make any shape or design you want. Nine come in a set, and you can buy packs of three more… Read More
Triplebyte is offering companies a different way to hire engineers — as co-founder and CEO Harj Taggar put it, the goal is “ignoring the résumé.” Today the company announced that its platform has been used to screen 12,000 engineers. The Triplebyte process starts with an online programming test, followed by a technical interview — the company says it has… Read More
Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), a 25-year-old, growth-stage venture capital firm, has closed on £260 million ($322 million) in commitments for its fifth fund, in one of the largest capital raises for a European venture firm this year. The firm plans to invest the capital mainly in the U.K. and Ireland, but it says investments in companies in other European countries will also be considered.… Read More
For the most part, apps like Prisma depend on curated training sets to impersonate style and apply it to a new context. While this may signal that machine creativity is dead on arrival, we shouldn’t forget that even Picasso needed to attend a showing of African masks before he could push cubism into the popular lexicon. Yali Saar, CEO of Tailor Brands, believes much the same about… Read More
Google has been highly involved with connecting U.S. voters to timely information throughout this election cycle, by offering everything from voter registration assistance to polling place information in its search result pages. Today, the company announced plans to display the results of the U.S. election directly in search, in over 30 languages, as soon as the polls close. Web searchers… Read More
Earlier this year, Google announced its plans to bring Android Auto, its phone-centric in-car infotainment platform, “to every car” by launching it as a stand-alone Android app, too. It’s taken a while, but the company today launched an update to the Android Auto app for — well — Android that makes good on this promise. Even if your car isn’t Android Auto… Read More
Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Open Whisper Systems (OWS), the not-for-profit software group behind the respected Signal Protocol crypto (and the eponymous Signal secure messaging app) has responded to criticism of how the group is developing its projects by calling for more contributions from the community to broaden implementations of the protocol. Read More
The open source Kubernetes container management project is probably the most popular of the various competing container management services available today. The Cloud Native Compute Foundation, which plays host to the open source side of Kubernetes, is hosting its first Kubernetes conference this week and unsurprisingly, we’ll see quite a bit of container-related news in the next few… Read More
Video quality on YouTube is getting an upgrade today, with the launch of HDR support across the video-sharing site. HDR offers improved picture quality with higher contrast, which means you’ll see more vibrant colors as well as make out more of the image in darker, shadowy scenes. However, not many consumers will be immediately available to enjoy the new HDR videos, as the technology… Read More
The questions — which I put to Intel, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Slack, Google, and Salesforce — were pretty straightforward. I simply wanted to know why none of the major technology companies in the U.S. (with the exception of LinkedIn) include disability in their public diversity reporting, and if they had plans to do so. Read More
With more online shoppers turning to sites like Amazon, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have had to step up their competition on the e-commerce front – including by offering faster deliveries – or risk losing customers. The latest to join the fight is PetSmart, which today is rolling out a redesigned, mobile-friendly website offering same-day, scheduled deliveries and… Read More
It looks like the last picture show for one of Google’s efforts at expanding into more detailed vertical search pages. Without much notice, the search giant has closed down its standalone movie site where people were able to search for cinemas, films and show times on a particular date and near a specific location, rolling some of the functionality directly into its main search… Read More
Tesla’s network of Superchargers have so far offered free, unlimited use to drivers of Tesla vehicles, but that was never going to last forever. Tesla announced upcoming changes to the Supercharger program today, which will introduce a fee for owners who purchase their vehicle after January 1, 2017 – but only if they exceed 400 kWh of charging in a year, which translates to… Read More
Gmail users on iOS – if you haven’t downloaded it yet, there’s likely a new version of Gmail waiting in your queue. Google’s near ubiquitous electronic mail application is getting some key upgrades for version 5.0.3, including, notably, a revamped UI that makes it look just like the native Android version of the app. Along with a more defined color scheme and more… Read More
Amid increased competition from Apple’s iMessage, Snapchat, and Google’s new entry Allo, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has now rolled out support for sharing GIFs in its messaging application on iOS. According to the app update text in iTunes, the new feature will allow users to send and receive GIFs, including Live Photos and shorter videos, both of which can be now converted to… Read More
Samsung needs something big next year. And not necessarily big in the sense of a giant screen. After all, it’s precisely that line that put the company in its current position, up against the ropes during the time of year that ought be its most profitable. In a number of ways, the Note 7 fiasco couldn’t have come at a less opportune time, heading into the holidays, just prior to… Read More
Blippar, the company that has brought a full augmented reality experience to a smartphone near you, has today announced the launch of its self-service suite of tools. This is the first time that Blippar has made its technology publicly available to developers, letting them tap into Blippar’s Computer Vision API and attach their own augmented reality experiences to real-world objects.… Read More
The popular online genealogy service MyHeritage today announced the launch of its MyHeritage DNA service for helping its users uncover more about their family’s history and ethnicity. Users who take the test, which currently costs $79 (plus shipping), will get a detailed ethnicity report that will map their families’ ethnic and geographic origins and, if available, the report will… Read More
Along party lines, the FCC voted to impose limitations on Internet service providers’ use of web browsing information disregarding the sensitivity of the information in a way that differs from regulations for online search engines and mobile apps. The new rules are based on an inaccurate understanding that deviates from the approach established by the Federal Trade Commission. Read More
