In 2009, I went to what was probably the saddest auto show Detroit has ever seen. It was the January after the economy collapsed and auto makers were teetering on the edge of going bust. But there were a couple of bright spots in the hall filled with smaller car companies, where Tesla and Fisker Automotive both had vehicles on display. (There was also a Chevy Volt in the bigger hall.) The… Read More
We reported yesterday that several high-level employees had parted ways with Rothenberg, including its director of finance and the head of its SF office, who happen to be father and son (Tom and Tommy Leep). We’ve subsequently learned that firm departures run far more widely. Other top executives who’ve left include the company’s chief revenue officer, who quit… Read More
Greylock Talent Partner Dan Portillo sat down with Twitter Head of Revenue Engineering Wade Chambers to outline the best interview process to attract and retain talent. Read More
Amazon’s Alexa skill set continues to grow, and owners of the Genesis G80 and G90 from Hyundai’s standalone luxury car brand are the latest to benefit. Genesis now uses lets Amazon Echo, Tap, Dot and Fire TV owners use voice commands to remotely start their engine, set climate control, lock and unlock doors and honk the horn or turn on the lights, all from the comfort of their… Read More
Drones have the potential to revolutionize our lives in many ways. However, some people have concerns. In the case of drone technology, one we hear often is the possible invasion of privacy. After months of discussions, a collaborative process resulted in a consensus set of voluntary best practices that balance people’s rights to operate drones with all of our rights to privacy. Read More
Dexter, the betaworks-backed company that helps people build integration-based apps, has today announced the close of a $2.3 million seed round. The funding round was led by Rakuten Ventures, with participation from Social Starts and betaworks. Dexter lets developers build integration-based apps without all the messy work of building the actual infrastructure. Using plug-and-play blocks,… Read More
While the fate of Gawker is still unclear – last-minute Hail Mary media saves are the norm when it comes to online properties (even if it does gut the site) – what is clear is that Gawker as we once knew it is dead. The current staff probably won’t stick around only to fall under some less beneficent ruler and Univision doesn’t want what is perceived as a hive of snark… Read More
Google today announced that it plans to set up a new space for developers and startups at 301 Howard Street in San Francisco, just a few blocks from its main San Francisco office on Spear Street. The idea here is to provide a 14,000 square-foot space (which accounts for about one floor in the building) for the next class of Google’s equity-free Launchpad Accelerator and to offer an… Read More
Every week it seems like another retailer, bank, or technology company launches a mobile payments solution. Apple Pay, Android Pay, CVS Pay, Walmart Pay…Pre Pay…Over Pay…Tai Pay…it’s all a bit much. Rather than money or hardware, the mobile payments battle is a fight for ownership of the customer. Retailers care a lot about the top 20 percent of their shoppers.… Read More
Twitter just unveiled a new feature that will let everyone filter low quality notifications from bots and spammers. Twitter has had bullying issues in the past, and the company is now taking actions to make it a more welcoming place.
Twitter is wording this new quality filter as a tool to hide notifications from bots and duplicate tweets from spammers. But it could also be a way to prevent… Read More
Score another win for CRISPR. Scientists at MIT are using the ever-intriguing genome-editing system to engineer human cells capable of recording and reporting the intensity and duration past events. The analog memory storage system builds upon past work developed by scientists that programmed cells to flip DNA sections when events – like exposure to specific chemicals – occurred.… Read More
Coding bootcamps can be quite costly. In order to combat that, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a new experimental initiative in partnership with colleges and universities to enable students to pay for certain coding bootcamps using federal financial aid. Through the Educational Quality through Innovation Partnerships, students will be able to apply for federal financial aid… Read More
French startup Whyd started off as a social network for music lovers but recently announced that it would switch its focus for a hardware project. The company just unveiled this secret hardware project — it’s a high-fidelity connected speaker that combines voice recognition with all music streaming services out there.
The company isn’t doing a Kickstarter. Instead, Whyd is… Read More
CNN has been using drones to gather video for some time now, having employed aerial vehicles to cover such recent key stories as the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the floods that ravaged Louisiana. Unmanned aerial vehicles were also put to work during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and town halls. The cable news network is looking to double-down on the technology… Read More
Gawker.com, pioneering web publication and the brainchild of Nick Denton, will be shut down as of next week, according to Gawker itself. The closure of the site comes after Univision’s winning bid for the Gawker Media company, which was forced into bankruptcy following a successful lawsuit by Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) funded by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. Univision’s bid… Read More
Before there were Apple Stores in Williamsburg, Grand Central Station and the World Trade Center – heck, before there were Apple Stores at all – there was Tekserve. For nearly 30 years, the Mac specialist dutifully served Manhattan, before throwing in the towel earlier this week. Now Tekserve is cleaning shop. After closing its doors on the 15th, the iconic computer retailer is… Read More
Over the last year, Twitter has been suspending accounts for promoting terrorism. The social network had already made it public that 125,000 accounts were suspended between mid-2015 and early 2016. Today we learned that Twitter has added an additional 235,000 suspensions, bringing their two-year total to 360,000 accounts. By Twitter’s own admission, quickly identifying accounts… Read More
Dish Network’s Sling TV has so far offered a different way for cord cutters to subscribe to the “best of TV” via its online streaming TV service. However, that hasn’t included access to local channels that you receive over-the-air. But that may be changing, according to an Amazon listing which touts a new hardware device called AirTV. The device works with an antenna… Read More
John Maeda is leaving VC firm KPCB where he was a design partner to join Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and a bunch of other things. Maeda will have a long, elaborate title at Automattic — he’s the company’s new Global Head, Computational Design and Inclusion. Before KPCB, Maeda was a research faculty member at the MIT Media Lab in the 1990s. “I wanted to… Read More
A couple of times a week for about 3-5 hours, Sam Triplett sits in his abode in China, opens a live-streaming app called Huajiao and talks about anything and everything, prompted mostly by commenters who are watching. Ricey Chen does the same thing using the same app, but she does it for about 20 hours per week. Triplett makes between $100 and $150 per stream and Chen makes about $7,500 per week. Read More
