Just 2 percent of applicants got accepted to appear in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt SF; Pundit was one of the teams to make the cut. The company debuted their audio social media platform on stage, presenting it to a panel of judges. Co-founders Billy Shaw Susanto and Chris Aston told TechCrunch that they believe their forum for “bite-sized talkshows” will be used… Read More
Hi Tim and Marni. As the bosses of my boss’ boss, I just want to say that y’all did a really really great job on stage today. Glad to know that things are going well with our new family members at Yahoo. It sounds like you’ve bitten off a pretty big bite of company with the deal and I’m glad to hear that y’all are taking your time digesting that Yahoo behemoth.… Read More
Is anyone actually watching videos in Verizon’s go90 mobile streaming application? That question was posed to the audience this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, and fewer than 10 people raised their hands. Yikes. It’s fair to say that Verizon’s* entry into the mobile streaming market — a means of competing with other over-the-top services like Netflix, Hulu or… Read More
Most GPS navigation apps use one of two methods to route you to your destination. The first method is called “detect and react,” and is when a navigation algorithm detects when you have hit traffic, then reacts by re-routing you around it. The second method uses historical traffic patterns to assume that because a specific road was congested on a Friday at 2pm two weeks ago,… Read More
Now your sweaty body can power your phone. Like Neo in the Matrix, a new system created by researchers at North Carolina State University lets you generate electricity with a wearable device. Previous systems used massive, rigid heat sinks. This system uses a body-conforming patch that can generate 20 μW per centimeter squared. Previous systems generated only 1 microwatt or less. The… Read More
An Austin startup called EverlyWell wants to make lab testing accessible to anybody who wants to know more about their own body and health. Rather than develop the clinical tests, or panels, on their own the company facilitates online ordering of tests by anyone who needs them, insured or not, said CEO and founder Julia Cheek. While some of the tests are based on the analysis of a few drops… Read More
On the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield stage today, Wazer showed off its $6,000 desktop water cutter for the first time. Competing against huge industrial units costing upwards of $100,000, the company is launching a Kickstarter campaign to make water jet cutters accessible to creative souls, hackers and engineers everywhere. A great idea for people who have requirements where just… Read More
Early this morning, Jeff Bezos revealed plans for the next Blue Origin rocket, the New Glenn. Unlike their New Shepard rocket, which is only capable of up-and-down suborbital launches, New Glenn will be the company’s first rocket capable of bringing payloads and humans into orbit around the Earth. Similar to New Shepard, New Glenn is designed with a recoverable booster and is intended… Read More
Studio Neat has a pretty good track record when it comes to making accessories for your Apple devices, as well as cocktail tools. And yet, the company had yet to make good docks for your iPhone and Apple Watch. Studio Neat is fixing that with two new docks. As usual, Studio Neat uses high quality materials — you won’t find any plastic on these docks. Instead, the company mills… Read More
Before Mike Judge took the stage at Disrupt SF today, the crowd was treated with 4 minutes of deleted scenes from the most recent season of HBO’s Silicon Valley.
There are some fun extra cuts from the famous “spaces vs. tabs” scene and the Pied Piper jacket segment, plus tons of new one-liners from Jared.
Take a look at these exclusive scenes true fans of the show will… Read More
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said today that the company faced “difficult decisions” when it deleted a post by a Norwegian journalist containing an iconic photograph of a girl fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Sandberg expressed regret at her company’s decision to repeatedly delete the photograph and said Facebook would do better at preserving newsworthy content… Read More
Another day, another drone that can perch on fences like a bird and carry deck chairs around in its scary claws. Officially called the PD6B-AW-ARM, this drone is made by Prodrone in Japan and features two robotic arms. The 6-rotor drone can lift up to 44 pounds and lasts for 30 minutes on a charge. The drone can lift objects and can even come to rest perched on a fence or railing, a feature… Read More
It seems counterintuitive to call a service Waitlist. No one wants to be put on a wait list; we want to just do the thing we came to do. But ChargePoint has, ahem, a point in creating this new feature, which launches today. Basically, it allows drivers of electric vehicles to virtually queue up for a charging station. Here’s the situation that Waitlist aims to solve. Say John, who has… Read More
I’ll admit that when ZTE first launched Project CSX, I was a bit underwhelmed, believing that the initiative was simply focused on handsets. Limited the crowdsourcing competition to those devices seemed like the company was resigning itself to a fate of suggestions along the lines of bigger screens and battery batteries. And as well and good as those things are, they’re the kind… Read More
Major deal alert –
iTunes is offering six different $10 bundles of 10 movies to celebrate 10 years of iTunes movies.
Proud of @iTunesMovies and 10 years of celebrating docs, indies, blockbusters & more. Congrats and thank you! https://t.co/Y9QEINrHfJ
— Eddy Cue (@cue) September 12, 2016
If you’ve ever bought a movie on iTunes you know how amazing of a deal this is. Read More
Eight years is a long time in the tech industry — not so much in politics, though. At Disrupt SF today, U.S. CTO Megan Smith and Deputy CTO Alexander Macgillivray reflected on the hard road the Obama administration has traveled in tech, the work they’ve done, and things that will take eight more years (at least) to accomplish. Read More
What’s the buzz all about at TechCrunch Disrupt? LoveNuts, that’s what. It’s a vibrator, designed to look like a funky nut — and adds the glistening sheen of plausible deniability by pretending it’s a flashlight. The company claims it’s “ready to rescue a woman in any kind of emergency.” Read More
French edtech startup OpenClassrooms has raised €6 million in new funding. Backing comes from Banque Publique d’Investissements (BPI), Citizen Capital, Xavier Niel (NJJ Capital), and existing investor Alven Capital. Read More
We were pleased to have “Silicon Valley” executive producer Mike Judge join us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Monday. The HBO show has managed to both portray and parody the tech companies and familiar faces that we know and love. For those of you who watch the show, you know that Judge is no stranger to Disrupt. Startup Battlefield was featured throughout the… Read More
Silicon Valley has a huge diversity problem, but a blunt instrument hiring quotas for diverse candidates still isn’t the answer, according to Slack head of engineering Leslie Miley. Instead, Silicon Valley — and Slack — have to get inventive, and look in some non-obvious places, to figure out how to bring in candidates that are outside the traditional Silicon Valley… Read More
