Amazon announced an update to Fire TV and its smaller companion, the Fire TV Stick, which will bring expanded Alexa-powered voice search to both devices, as well as a way to receive personalized recommendations from top streaming sites, like Netflix and HBO. The company claims that its voice search feature will now work across over 75 apps and channels, which is more than any rival… Read More
Earlier this year, Trainline acquired Captain Train for quite a bit of money. Now, Trainline is trying to unify its train ticket booking system. First, Captain Train is now called Trainline, just like its parent company.
The logo, the app and the website are now all called Trainline. If you go on thetrainline.com, you can book tickets for the U.K. On trainline.eu, you can get tickets for Europe. Read More
The battle over noncompetes is a modern-day rendition of an age-old trope: the big corporation versus the little employee; Goliath versus David. The only difference? In the fable, Goliath was brutish and slow, and everyone knew he was the bad guy. Today, Goliath is smart and backed by an All-Star team of lobbyists, and he’s doing his best to convince us it’s David we should be… Read More
DJI’s next drone looks like it will probably be the foldable DJI Mavic, according to new image leaks that build on a previous trademark application DJI filed for the product name. The leaked photos diverge from DJI’s existing photographic drones by employing a folding farm design, which should allow it to become nicely portable, especially when compared to its current fixed-arm… Read More
If there is one threat to Google Search, it’s that the majority of content created today lives inside social apps like Instagram and Snapchat and can’t easily be indexed to show in search results. And, even when Google does manage to pull in a piece of content from a social network, it’s nearly impossible to extract any context from the photo, which is essential if Google… Read More
I’ve just finished watching Entrepreneur First‘s sixth cohort’s Demo Day Demo in London. The event, held at Facebook’s UK HQ, saw 21 newly outed startups pitch their wares on stage to investors, press and other actors in the European tech scene. Read More
Apple’s recently announced promise to clean up its App Store by removing old, outdated and non-compliant applications could see hundreds of thousands of apps getting booted from the mobile application marketplace, according to new data about the number of abandoned apps live on the storefront today. Apple, of course, didn’t specifically detail its criteria for kicking out older… Read More
There’s much anticipation about Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi’s long-awaited entry into the U.S. market. And we don’t have long to wait. Kinda. TechCrunch understands that Xiaomi will begin selling its first mainstream product in the U.S. — an Android set-top box — as soon as next month. Read More
At their heart, most smartwatches really aren’t all that far removed from those calculator watches from the 80s. The height of geek chic. Big and bulky pronouncements to world that the wearer is unafraid to wear his or her nerd cred quite literally on their sleeve. But wearables aren’t one-size-fits-all in any sense of the term. And along with increased competition comes a slew… Read More
When Box praised its partnership with IBM at its earnings call last week, it was holding one card close the vest. The two companies had been working on a new workflow tool, and today they announced Box Relay ahead of the BoxWorks customer conference this week in San Francisco. Workflow tools fall under the realm of Business Process Management (BPM) in the enterprise.… Read More
Hackers, start your engines. Yelp launched a public bug bounty program today, inviting the world’s hackers to pick apart its websites and mobile app in search of vulnerabilities that could affect reviewers and businesses. Yelp will pay researchers for their work, starting at $100 and maxing out at $15,000 for more complex or critical exploits. The program, which Yelp is coordinating… Read More
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. For the past three years, Apple has introduced new iPhones at a press event in early September. Based on multiple leaks, this year shouldn’t be an expection. The iPhone 7 (or whatever Apple calls it, but iPhone 7 seems likely) will feature more or less the same design as the iPhone 6s. The antenna lines at the back will be streamlined and… Read More
A new report out this morning from analysts at eMarketer is forecasting explosive growth for Snapchat’s ad revenue by next year. The firm estimates the mobile social application will generate $366.69 million in 2016, but that figure will grow to $935.46 million by 2017 – a jump it attributes to Snapchat’s ability to reach younger millennials, a wider ad portfolio, and ad… Read More
Entrepreneur First, the company builder program for technical graduates, has just kicked off its sixth cohort’s Demo Day Demo at Facebook’s London-based UK HQ where 21 newly formed startups are about to pitch on stage. But as is now tradition, EF is also taking the opportunity to make an announcement of its own. Read More
The price tag on Samsung’s comprehensive recall of all Note 7 devices shipped to date could be very expensive – Bloomberg reports an estimated total cost of around $1 billion for replacing all 2.5 million devices shipped since launch.
Samsung initiated a voluntary recall of the Note 7 last week after investigating scattered reports of exploding batteries in a small number of devices. Read More
PayPal this morning announced an expanded partnership with MasterCard aimed at helping the payments service become a more universally accepted checkout method at stores. The partnership, which follows a similar deal with Visa earlier this year, will make MasterCard a clear payment option within PayPal, increase PayPal’s presence at point-of-sale, and will enable Masterpass… Read More
What hath science wrought: First it created the brooding Mewtwo, whose tale of experimentation and weaponization is the dramatic underpinning for the original Pokémon movie; now, it’s responsible for Type: Null, a new synthetic Pokémon from the upcoming Sun and Moon Pokémon games for 3DS that combines the strengths of various other pocket monsters. In addition to the fairly badass… Read More
In a quest to dismantle itself and become more relevant in the 21st Century, IAC-owned About.com is launching another standalone vertical in the form of The Balance, a personal finance website tailored to today’s millennial. The Balance is focused on making personal finance easy to understand, no matter where you are in life. The site will launch with more than 34,000 pieces of… Read More
Yet another partnership has been forged to help usher in the era of self-driving software: This time, it’s Volvo, which announced (via Reuters) a joint venture with Swedish-American car safety system supplier Autoliv to create autonomous driving. Volvo is already a partner of Uber’s in self-driving cars, and this new venture looks like yet another effort to help propel the… Read More
Adobe has a host of new features for its Creative Cloud video tools it’s debuting at IBC 2016 this week. The improvements include new team collaboration features, as well as new improvements to its VR video workflow, as well as updates to its beta Character Animator software. There are also performance improvements throughout, hopefully helping speed up your video editing workflow. The… Read More
