A report in The New York Times on a culture clash taking place in Palo Alto set off a bit of speculation as to the possibility of “a ban on coding,” as the article put it. Well, don’t worry. That’s not going to happen. Read More
Today, in a world of bacon-wrapped crust and custom-modified Chevys with pizza warmers, being excited about pizza is just not as easy as it used to be. Zume Pizza founder Julia Collins and her Elon Musk-esque approach to pizza doesn’t care much for the rest of the pizza industry. In her mind, the pizzavations of the previous decades are irrelevant if the pies arrive soggy, cold and… Read More
Most of us techies agree that optimal travel is teleportation or apparition. The dream is instantaneous point-to-point transport. All business transportation should be evaluated based on how close it comes to this ideal. Because modern travel isn’t instantaneous, our main metrics are productivity and convenience. Optimizing travel requires balancing speed with simplicity and flexibility. Read More
Samsung is looking into reports from multiple users that the recently released Galaxy Note 7 has issues wherein a few phones have exploded during charging. A Samsung spokesperson told TechCrunch that they’re “conducting a thorough inspection,” and Korean news agency Yonhap reported earlier that a potential recall of all Note 7 devices is one option on the table.… Read More
Today in Part 23 of our series entitled Goofy Rich-Person Gadgetry, we present the MB&F Balthazar, a posable robot that tells the time and has a “dark side.” First, a little context. This is basically a “novelty” designed by a watchmaker to sell to rich people. It’s entirely hand made and features an exposed mechanism and dual dials that tell the time.… Read More
Farm egg. It may seem as simple as just that. An egg. The food that Atkins and Paleo diets made popular once again. The food that draws one of many dividing lines between vegetarians and vegans. But this particular egg is one of the more layered, even scrambled (if you will), symbols of Silicon Valley startup-dom. It’s easy to dismiss the Yos of the tech world as outliers, but much harder… Read More
As dozens of Teslas baked in the sprawling Palo Alto parking lot of a local law firm yesterday, 100 top investors packed into a high-ceilinged meeting room. There, they listened as 13 startups deliver four-minute presentations about why they’re worth watching. The companies — all of them roughly six months old or younger, and all led by current college students or recent… Read More
It’s a question every major startup must answer eventually: What do you do when the regulators come knocking?
The answer varies depending on who you ask — for Uber, the solution used to be holding firm and butting heads with regulators, but in more recent years the ridesharing company turned to former Obama advisor David Plouffe to fight its battles. Airbnb fought back against… Read More
That’s what we call a teeny tiny fuckup. Beats sent a press release to iGen.fr and other French media outlets saying that they should expect new Beats products on September 7 during Apple’s press conference. There was also a screenshot of the official Apple media invite so that it was 100% clear for everyone that Beats was talking about Apple’s event. But this leak is… Read More
Didn’t see this coming. The big trend at this year’s IFA (once you factor out the eight billion fitness bands and Bluetooth headphones, at least) is apparently drawing pads. Wacom, Lenovo and now a new version of the Slate from French startup ISKN are working hard to bring the pen and paper kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Unlike Lenovo and Wacom’s offerings,… Read More
The Anniversary Update for Windows 10 brought a lot of nice features, including OS-level Ink features for stylus devices. But it also brought some nasty bugs along for the ride, including, but not limited to, a login problem that caused users to encounter a total OS freeze when running a PC that has two drives, including one for the OS and a second for apps and other data.
It wasn’t a… Read More
This morning around 9:07 am ET, SpaceX experienced a devastating explosion while completing a routine static test-fire in preparation for a launch on Saturday. Luckily, no injuries were reported, but the payload, the Amos-6 satellite, was on the Falcon 9 at the time and was also destroyed. A nearly $200 million satellite, Amos-6 was set to be launched to geostationary orbit and provide… Read More
Sennheiser’s always got a fair amount of stuff to show off at IFA. After all, the show is kind of, sort of in the audio company’s backyard (well, only a three hour drive away). This year it’s doubling down on consumer headphones with for new updates.
The HD 4 is a new line of big around-ear headphones in three different configurations with passive noise cancelling. The… Read More
Rumor has it that Apple is about to introduce an Apple Watch 2 on September 7, alongside a new iPhone. While many leaks indicate that the Apple Watch will have more or less a similar design as the original watch, a new leak from Byte shows that the Apple Watch 2 could have a bigger battery and a thinner display. The reasoning is quite simple. Based on previous rumors, the Apple Watch 2 will have… Read More
If you’re going to shell out some serious cash on a set of Bluetooth speakers, you might as well find a pair that matches the upholstery right? It’s a philosophy that has dominated a number of Bang & Olufsen’s high-end sound sculptures, and now Tivoli’s getting in on the action. The company’s probably best known for its internet radios these days, but the… Read More
It’s cleaning time in the App Store. Apple sent an email to its developer community indicating that there will be some upcoming changes in the App Store. If an app no longer works or is outdated, it’s going to get removed from the App Store. And it’s about time. “We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as… Read More
Fancy pens are fancy. They’re nice to own, really great to write with, and awful pretty. But what happens when you mash up fancy pen manufacturer Montblanc with some digital paper? Baby, you got a 21st century stew goin’. Montblanc calls it Montblanc Augmented Paper and it’s basically specially coded (and coated) paper that lets the pen and notebook sense their position. The… Read More
Earlier today, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad for no apparent reason. While we’re still trying to learn more about what happened, we already know that the company was doing a test, and an anomaly created a big mess. Fortunately, all personnel were clear of the launch pad. But this incident is going to affect Facebook’s Internet.org effort in a significant way as… Read More
I’ve always considered Blue’s USB microphones a podcasting tool — and I suspect Blue has, as well. They’re easy to use, they sound good and they’re affordable. Heck, I recorded my bit of the last TechCrunch podcast on a Snowball. The mics have also made a splash in the gaming community, presumably for all of the reasons mentioned above. To really drive the… Read More
ROLI, which makes the Seaboard (new type of keyboard musical instrument), has acquired FXpansion, a maker of software instruments, for an undisclosed sum. London-based FXpansion already makes sounds and effects for ROLI’s growing collection of hardware and software products. FXpansion’s virtual instruments include the BFD3, the world’s largest collection of acoustic drum… Read More
