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
Opera has rolled out a set of privacy features to its data-saving proxy for Android, Opera Max. It’s now billing it as a “data management and privacy app”. The company previewed the new privacy mode last month, saying it would be starting a gradual rollout — with the feature first available in Samsung’s S Secure mode on the Samsung Galaxy J5 Prime… Read More
Elsewhere, startup founders and VCs high-fived each other as the move put the region on the global map and they hoped it would lead to more funding and exits in the future. However, everyone has failed to go beyond superficial observations. Alibaba’s acquisition of Lazada is much more than simply growing retail GMV. Read More
Google today launched the first major update to its Firebase backend-as-a-service platform since it first announced its plans to turn the service into its unified platform for developers six months ago. While Facebook decided to shut down its competing Parse service earlier this year, Google decided to double down on Firebase (which it acquired in 2014) as its flagship development platform… Read More
GoOpti might be described as an Uber (or UberPOOL) for independent shuttle bus providers. It connects travellers from smaller European cities who want to travel to or from larger city airport hubs, and in doing so ensures economies of scale so that laying on a shuttle bus is viable. Read More
Freespee, which these days calls itself a “real-time conversation cloud technology company,” has raised €9.25 million in Series B funding. French venture capital firm Ventech led the round, alongside existing investors Sunstone Capital and Inventure. Silicon Valley Bank also participated, signalling that this is a mixture equity and debt financing. Read More
Robot vacuums may have once seemed an eccentricity, but they now represent a non-trivial portion of the overall vacuum market – 20 percent worldwide, according to iRobot CEO and co-founder Colin Angle, who I spoke to at TechCrunch Beijing 2016. And Roomba makes up 70 percent of that market, giving iRobot a commanding lead in the space. Exactly how many robots does that translate to? Over… Read More
The regulation would require instant messaging services and other internet companies to require users to register with their real names and personal information, and to censor content that is “prohibited.” Real name policies restrict anonymity and can encourage self-censorship for online communication. Read More
In recent months, we’ve seen several well-funded startups with strong teams either going through layoffs or shutting down entirely. The natural question to ask is why?
The short answer is that “on-demand” is not the optimal solution for most customer needs. Read More
Say you’ve inherited a rare genetic mutation that guarantees you’ll get a certain form of cancer by the time you reach 50 years of age. And that this is most likely how you are going to die. But what if I told you this cancer gene, passed down from generation to generation, can be snipped out of your genome entirely and you never pass it on to any of your offspring? Read More
Given that Sinovation Ventures founder Dr. Kai-Fu Lee has around 50 million followers on Chinese social networks, he has become an oracle when it comes to predicting the future of tech in China. Kai-Fu Lee talked about the most important trends in Chinese startups at TechCrunch Beijing 2016.
Sinovation Ventures recently raised the equivalent of $675 million in total across a Chinese and an… Read More
Robots — and the smart home in general — are a hot topic, and it’s one where an enormous amount of investment is happening right now. There are many companies like Nest and Ring that are trying to target segments of the home in the hopes of making everything smarter.
But it’s easy to forget that the home is still a physical space, and in order for everything to work… Read More
Six years ago, Google raised a lot of eyebrows when it announced it was developing a self-driving car. At the time, very few people took the technology seriously. However, things have been gearing up, and now self-driving cars are about to be part of our everyday life. Just last August, Uber rolled out its first batch of 100 driverless taxi-cars in Pittsburgh.
This is one of the most… Read More
Ford, GM, Toyota and VW are just a handful of the car manufacturers planning to put self-driving cars on the road in the next five years. If you ask Uber or Tesla, they might say driverless cars have already arrived… which means we’re running out of time to secure one of the juiciest new targets for hackers. Read More
Need a teeny tiny computer that can run Android or Linux? Only have $20? Well you’re in luck. When we first met the Orange Pi (get it?) the company was selling a nice Raspberry Pi clone for $15. Now they’re selling a souped up version with all the trimmings. The board includes an Ethernet port and three USB ports. It has 1GB of memory, H5 High Performance Quad-core 64-bit… Read More
I’m a really lucky guy. In the course of this work I get to talk to a lot of my personal heroes and my favorite so far has been Ruben Bolling aka the creator of Tom the Dancing Bug. Bolling is a fixture in the alt-comics scene and he has a lot to say about the rise and fall of the alt-weekly and the new laws of popularity. If you want to know how to build and keep an audience you can look… Read More
