After a surprise Nigeria visit to meet with techies in Lagos, Mark Zuckerberg took his Africa tour to Kenya this Thursday. There the Facebook CEO visited the iHub innovation space, reviewed the BRCK mobile Wi-Fi device, had lunch with Kenyan ICT Cabinet Secretary Joseph Mucheru, and met with tech leaders Juliana Rotich and Erik Hersman.
Like the Lagos expedition, the trip was unannounced. Read More
It’s been a long day away from outlets, so I reach into my pocket and fish around for a battery module. The zoom camera pack clips out easy, making room for the added battery capacity, which should give me enough juice to get through the evening. I slip the camera module back into my pocket; I won’t need it, since at the party I’m headed to (a six-year anniversary party… Read More
Poor Qualcomm. Always the reference design, never the retail unit. It’s like being the guy behind the guy, the comedian’s comedian, the power behind the product that doesn’t get to reap the pomp and circumstance of a retail displays and big and flashy press conferences. The San Diego-based company did kick off IFA a few days back with its own event, but coverage got buried… Read More
Virtually all companies are doing digital transformation wrong. We’re placing it around the edge, keeping it at arm’s length, like it’s a problem and not an opportunity. If companies are to succeed, we need to rebuild around what’s possible, with the greatest toolkit we’ve ever seen. Read More
Turkey has been having an annus horribilis. For the past year the country has incurred bombings, the rise of extremists, growing authoritarianism and censorship, and, this past July 15, an attempt coup on its democratically elected government.
Still the country’s entrepreneurs and investors soldier on. Aytül Erçil, the founder of the visual recognition technology company Vispera… Read More
Esports betting has boomed in the last five years, attracting investments from celebrities, investors and entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban and Ashton Kutcher — even the former NBA Commissioner, David Stern, has talked about it on many forums. Gambling in eSports has charmed stakeholders but it may have created a monster in the gaming industry. As with every growing industry, it’s… Read More
Let’s talk box office! Because it’s one of my pet obsessions; I’ve long been curious how the rise of new entertainment tech (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Pokémon Go) will impact movies, our oldest and most storied cultural commons. And because I was trawling through Box Office Mojo’s numbers, as you do, and happened to stumble across something which makes me fear for… Read More
Fossil’s not messing around here. Back in November, the company announced plans to pick up fitness tracking company Misfit for $260 million, and all the while, it’s been announcing connected wearables under its own name by the boatload. The company’s Q line, home to its various fitness trackers and smartwatches, includes a number of recent additions that were on display this… Read More
Like Garmin, TomTom’s been getting pretty aggressive with its wearable strategy. No wonder, really – it’s a space that’s seen exponential growth over the past few years, as in-car GPS systems have, at best, flatlined, thanks to the near ubiquity of smartphones. But TomTom’s not giving up the ghost. The company’s been playing around in the space to see what,… Read More
We all knew in our hearts that, if we just waited long enough, the internet of things would come around to self-playing piano. That surely the cloud would incorporate that last vestige of ole timey technology. And now, here at IFA, the least portable of home audio systems has finally gone multi-room. Or, as Yamaha opens its decidedly hyperbolic press release, “For the first time in… Read More
This could actually go a ways toward easing my obsessive dial checking on the way out the door in the morning. Drop, they of connected kitchen scale fame, is partnering with Bosch to bring an added layer of connectivity to the German appliance maker’s kitchen devices.
The deal, announced here at IFA in Berlin, starts simply, with the company’s Series 8 oven, bringing remote… Read More
We take a look at Sanbot’s robot, which serves and protects, Hyperloop test track has been spotted being built in LA, Mercedes-Benz is working on an ‘in-car office,’ Google sets out to prove machines aren’t very good at fashion design, and Google is set to debut Echo competitor and a VR headset in October. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Here’s a silly thing because it is the ass end of a Friday. Apple just started using the Twitter account — @apple — that they’ve had since 2011. And they’re using it to send out an ‘invisible’ tweet. Read More
He’s a U.S. Olympian, NFL alum, startup CEO and now a TV host. Jeremy Bloom sat down with TechCrunch to tell us about his new show “Adventure Capitalists,” which he characterizes as “Shark Tank meets the great outdoors.” The CNBC series takes a look at investment opportunities in the sports and action space — from electric bikes to underwater jet packs.… Read More
If you’ve got a Galaxy Note 7, you’ve probably already heard about the recall. But the specifics differ for each region, and Samsung just now released the details for what your options are here in the land of the free. Read More
The first cybersecurity unicorn kernel popped in late 2013 with the announcement of CloudFlare’s $50 million Series C investment. Today, 10 privately held companies hold membership in the ultra-exclusive cybersecurity unicorn club. With the addition of each new member, eyebrows are raised and questions are asked. Are cybersecurity unicorns outliers or are we at the start of a… Read More
Earlier this summer I wrote about Mozilla’s efforts to rollout a multi-process architecture, codename Electrolysis, for Firefox. In the months since, Mozilla has completed its initial tests on 1 percent of its user population and the initial numbers are good, according to Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox at Mozilla. The company is reporting a 400 percent improvement in… Read More
Airbnb received 188 requests for users’ data from governments around the world in the first six months of this year, according to the company’s first-ever transparency report. The home-sharing company provided data in response to 82 of those requests. Airbnb is publishing a transparency report as part of its Community Compact, an initiative to make the company more transparent to… Read More
Chris Moore is an increasingly rare breed. At the founding of Redpoint Ventures 17 years ago, Moore joined as an associate and — unlike today’s associates who often are cycled in and out of venture firms — he was made a partner. Since then, Moore has led deals in numerous companies that have gone on to sell for sizable amounts, including Auditude, acquired by Adobe;… Read More
In the movie Moonraker James Bond has to fight a madman with his own fleet of Space Shuttles. The movie was made in 1979, a golden age for government-subsidized spaceflight. Back then the thought that a man like Hugo Drax could afford a fleet of shuttles was ludicrous. The thought that private businesses could send anything bigger than a breadbox into orbit was silly. Sure the sight of Jaws,… Read More
