What will friending, sharing, and messaging look like in virtual reality? Facebook has tapped video game giant Electronic Arts’ VP Rachel Rubin Franklin as the new head of the Facebook Social VR team. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg presented an exciting demo of how friends can play and explore together in VR thanks to Facebook, and Franklin will now work to bring that experience to the… Read More
Nuheara’s IQbuds are strange little things. It took a rep a few tries to properly explain the things when they first crossed my radar. And honestly, it wasn’t until I took the things for a spin on the crowded Manhattan streets that I really grasped what they were all about. The simplest way to explain them is as a sort of combination wireless earbuds and hearing aids. They do all… Read More
Messaging app Signal is proud to be end-to-end encrypted, and privacy is their watchword — but its new ephemeral messages aren’t being billed as tools to that end, and nor should they be. Read More
Applications are now open for student groups to attend Disrupt London at The Copper Box Arena on Tuesday, December 6th. The program is part of Include, TechCrunch’s diversity program aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to gain better access to the startup scene. Starting at Disrupt SF last month, TC has formalized our student program by creating… Read More
The interactive navigation app Waze, with its 65 million active monthly users, has partnered with Esri, which provides geographic information systems (GIS) software to 25,000 state, local and national governments. While the combination isn’t quite the vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication that will enable autonomous vehicles in the future, it is a kind of app-to-infrastructure… Read More
A pair of satellites operating in tandem for five years have produced a depth map of the planet so exact you could theoretically zoom down to street level and tell an adult from a kid, or spot a breaking wave at Malibu. The immense database — some 2.6 petabytes — is available for free to researchers. Read More
Rumors have swirled for months that if Hillary Clinton succeeds in her bid to become the next U.S. president, she would appoint Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg as Treasury Secretary. But Sandberg shot down those rumors today at the Virtuous Circle conference, hosted by the Internet Association. “I’m staying at Facebook,” Sandberg said when asked during a… Read More
At a forum on Capital Hill designed to gather input from industry stakeholders on NHTSA guidelines, Toyota Motor North America director of technology and innovation policy Hilary Cain pointed out that proposed changes to California’s self-driving test guidelines would make a voluntary process requested by the new NHTSA autonomous driving guidelines essentially mandatory. This could… Read More
The promise of 3D printing has been kind of a dud. Aside from a few cool Yoda heads and some small plastic pieces, there have been no “indie” players doing much interesting in the space except Markforged. Markforged is a Boston company we featured last year that makes carbon-fiber reinforced plastic parts using traditional 3D-printing techniques. This means the objects they print… Read More
C1X has raised another $6.5 million in what it says is the first part of a Series B round of funding.
The company was founded by Mukundu Kumaran (CEO) and Daisuke Nagayama (chief operating officer and chief global strategist) — Kumara, previously worked as an engineering director at Yahoo, and he told me that his goal is “to simplify how the basic advertising transaction… Read More
According to a new study published today from the American Civil Liberties Union, major social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have recently provided user data access to Geofeedia, the location-based, social media surveillance system used by government offices, private security firms, marketers and others.
As TechCrunch previously reported, Geofeedia is one of a bevy of… Read More
Aiming to increase diversity and foster inclusion in the tech industry is not the same as affirmative action, TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot said on stage today at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle conference. “I wouldn’t say it’s affirmative action but it’s a recognition,” Brown-Philpot said. “Our company should represent the population… Read More
President Obama released an op-ed on CNN today, praising the accomplishments of NASA to date and encouraging the nation to keep its sights set on Mars. While it was an inspiring endorsement for NASA and space exploration, it comes on the tails of a congressional bill intended to prevent the next presidential administration from changing NASA’s plan to send humans to Mars by the… Read More
The Note 7 debacle hasn’t been good for anyone — not for Samsung, not for Android, not for consumers, not for airlines, not for fire departments, not for stylus-lovers and certainly not for Oculus. The Facebook-owned virtual reality powerhouse currently has its entire mobile VR future pinned on the successes of Samsung’s handsets and the discontinuation of Note 7 production… Read More
Google just announced that it has acquired FameBit, a marketplace that connects video creators with marketers who want to sponsor their content. This could be an important step for Google’s YouTube, where monetization has been a big concern — not just for YouTube as a whole, but also for individual creators. YouTube has been working to provide more support on this front through… Read More
AI is all around us, from searching on Google to what news you see on social media. With the momentum around AI growing, it’s not surprising that some of the most innovative retail sites have been experimenting with the use of AI, as well. Businesses that ignore this growing trend will find themselves playing catch-up for years. But how, exactly, is this technology going to change retail? Read More
Self-driving car startup and Oxford spinoff Oxbotica put a modified Renault car with autonomous driving tech on UK roads for the first time, in a trial in England’s Milton Keynes at a very slow 5 miles per hour. It’s a tentative start, but it’s a start nonetheless, as the car handled cornering and breaking for pedestrians all on its own.
The test is the result of British… Read More
Part of the goal of the Internet of Things, if we must continue calling it that, is improved efficiency for our newly intelligent appliances. But we could effect that in a much simpler way by passing data over the energy grid itself, suggests a successful trial in the UK. Read More
It’s official: Samsung has given up on the Galaxy Note 7. The phones — and the thought-to-be-safe replacements — are exploding. Now Samsung has to get all those phones back before more of ’em pop. The question, then: how does Samsung get them back? They probably shouldn’t ask people to just take something that has a known tendency to randomly shoot smoke… Read More
With sights set on developing fully autonomous driving technology, MIT spinoff startup Optimus Ride has raised $5.25 million in seed funding, led by NextView Ventures and FirstMark Capital. With the funding, Boston-based Optimus Ride hopes to provide something unique to the self-driving technology market, powered by a team with over 30 years of collective experience in robotics, on-demand… Read More
