A Chicago-based startup called Snapsheet has raised a Series C round of $20 million to make life easier for people who have been through a car crash.
The company’s cloud-based software is used by auto insurance providers to guide users through a photo- and information-gathering process on the scene of an accident. It is basically white labeled as a mobile app for each auto insurance… Read More
Today’s 20-something tech wizards might not worry about the challenges of old age — but they should. Seniors represent a huge untapped market for tech companies. While just 13 percent of America’s population is 65 or older today, that slice will jump to 19 percent by 2030. One area that holds particular promise? Wearables. Read More
Apple is making a visible push in the direction of AI today by hiring Carnegie Mellon University professor Russ Salakhutdinov for what appears to be a newly minted position: director of AI research. Read More
Imagine a world where manufacturing is no longer geographically mandated, when you can print custom parts in minutes, and anyone can build anything. That’s the world Amar Hanspal, Autodesk’s SVP or Product, wants to live in. I talked to Hanspal while he was at a future of manufacturing conference and we talked about all of the pitfalls of future manufacturing, the improvements… Read More
There’s a fine line between security and being creepy and I think the Netatmo Presence is on the right side of things. This porch light/security camera melds the best of an automatic LED floodlight with an outdoor webcam, offering you a way to keep tabs on things even if you don’t want to leave the relative safety of your basement bunker.
Designed by French company Netatmo, the… Read More
If nothing else, you can’t really argue with the price. Announced this morning, the latest version of Acer’s 15.6-inch Chromebook gets a couple of key upgrades over its predecessor, but none might be quite as welcome as the fact that the company has dropped its starting price by $50, down to $199. The other key feature here – as with all Chromebooks – is battery life.… Read More
CoreOS today announced that it has hired the founders of Redspread, a Y Combinator-incubated company that helps enterprises deploy their software on Kubernetes container clusters, and that Redspread’s open source tools are now part of the CoreOS family.
In its announcement today, CoreOS simply said that Redspread is “joining” CoreOS. Even after repeated prodding, the… Read More
Google’s airfare search destination Google Flights already offered a variety of features aimed at helping you find low-cost tickets, but today it’s rolling out one more: it will show you when prices are expected to increase for certain flights, so you can book before the tickets become more expensive. It’s also rolling out other tips that will help you shop for the best… Read More
You can imagine the hypothetical advisory board meeting at Y Combinator can’t you. “So, Peter, you know that latest allegation of sexual harassment against Donald Trump? Well, we have a womens’ safety startup in the next cohort. As you’ve met him, do you think The Donald could help us beta test it?” This bizarre, imaginary scenario might sound utterly… Read More
A stinging series of articles by the Wall Street Journal soon followed, and in recent months, the government agency that oversees U.S. labs has banned founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from operating a blood-testing laboratory for two years, and Theranos has shuttered its clinical labs and wellness centers. To make matters worse, company was last week slapped with a lawsuit by one of… Read More
TechCrunch Include Office Hours are happening in NYC on November 3rd! Richard Kerby and David Pakman of Venrock will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level. The Office Hours program… Read More
The oversight court for the UK’s intelligence and security agencies has ruled they operated unlawfully and breached domestic human rights law by harvesting bulk comms data and maintaining large databases of personal information on UK citizens for a decade and more. Read More
A new type of optical fiber – a channel capable of transporting light – developed by MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers could make it far easier to detect the onset of disease early, or track the progress of healing and treatment. The new “stretchy,” rubber-like optical fiber created by the team can be stretched and bent, and is made almost entirely of water in… Read More
Everyone has their hobbies. And Trevor Bauer, pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, likes to build racing drones. And anyone that has ever built racing drones know they need a lot of maintenance – manually installing and swapping out propellers, batteries etc. But Bauer had a slight mishap while repairing one of his drones last Thursday – less than 48 hours before he was supposed… Read More
Ebay this morning launched a new site, dedicated to shopping for furniture and other items for the home. Called eBay Collective, the site also takes advantage of technology from the company’s recently announced acquisition of visual search engine Corrigon, which it bought for under $30 million. On eBay Collective, the technology has been integrated to power a “Shop the… Read More
The public broadcaster PBS today unveiled a new plan to bring its children’s television programming to its young audience, who spend more time behind tablets than sitting in front of TV sets. It’s debuting its own branded tablet, called the Playtime Pad. The tablet, which is produced by Ematic will come preloaded with PBS Kids’ entertainment, including games, video clips,… Read More
Apple has been working on a not-so-secret car project for years. Project Titan, as it is called internally, has already gone through a bunch of leadership and roadmap changes. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company is now scrapping plans to build an electric car. The car team is focusing on autonomous driving technology instead. Even more intriguing, it looks like Apple is… Read More
Rockstar is toying with the emotions of fans of its popular western adventure game Red Dead Redemption, with a couple of teaser images that are clearly leading up to a big announcement. Fans and industry observers suspect we could finally see the studio announce a sequel to the 2010 Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game. Red Dead Redemption was itself a follow-up to Red Dead Revolver, a… Read More
Cisco announced today that it was acquiring Worklife, a member of the Y Combinator winter 2015 class, for an undisclosed sum. Worklife was founded with the idea of improving online meetings, something that Cisco has been working on for years. It of course owns WebEx and has been trying to enhance that experience in recent years with Cisco Spark. Cisco intends to add the Worklife team to… Read More
Consumers have made a big shift to using mobile phones as their primary, and often sole, telephone, but as they have done so, they’ve also created something of a rift in the business world: many of the companies that count those consumers as customers are still using landlines — 275 million businesses in the U.S. alone — resulting in a feature gulf between how the two… Read More
