Experiencing the world’s art just got a little easier, thanks to Google’s newly launched Arts & Culture application which puts works of art from over a thousand museums across 70 countries into the palm of your hand. But the app goes beyond offering only static images and text – instead, it now offers tools to search art works by any keyword, browse by color, as well as… Read More
This is Jessica Singleton’s last week as chief digital officer of the City of New York. Singleton became the city’s digital director in January 2014, then took on an expanded role as chief digital officer last year — at the time, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration said she would “encourage public participation in City-led technology initiatives, focus on… Read More
Teams and artists aren’t able to manage their businesses effectively, e.g. they cannot move prices in real-time in response to changes in supply and demand (closed ticketing systems don’t expose the APIs necessary for real-time pricing, a practice that is standard in other industries). It’s no wonder that when you add all this up, legacy ticketing is one of the most… Read More
Nutrition has been something of a missing link in the world of heath wearables. At best, some devices feature a system that requires users to manually enter what they’ve eaten over the course of a day. On a whole, however, what we eat doesn’t get nearly as much scrutiny as the ways in which we attempt to burn it off. STYR Labs is offering an interesting take on issue,… Read More
Google today announced the public beta launch of its Cloud Natural Language API, a new service that gives developers access to Google-powered sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and syntax analysis. This new API joins Google’s other pre-trained machine-learning APIs like the Cloud Speech API, which is now also available in public beta, the Vision API and the Translate API. The new… Read More
The learn to code space is packed with ideas. But when it comes to what children want to do online, towering over everything else is the build-it-yourself Microsoft-owned Minecraft platform. All lesser virtual, creative playgrounds are overshadowed by this pixellated silhouette. Read More
Yahoo’s first diversity report in 2014 was a wake-up call for Margenett Moore-Roberts. At the time, she was working heads-down as senior director of Yahoo’s video advertising strategy and facilitating $50 million a year in revenue.
“I hadn’t looked up until our diversity report was published,” Moore-Roberts tells me. “I was surprised, to say the least. I… Read More
Microsoft this morning announced an expansion to its Office 365 suite with the debut of a new service called Bookings, which will allow customers to schedule appointments with a business using online software. In addition to connecting businesses and customers without the need for a phone call, Bookings will also manage other aspects to appointment management, including sending out… Read More
Back in 2006, Google opened its first owned and operated data center in The Dalles, Oregon, and starting today, you’ll be able to host your Google Cloud Platform applications in Oregon, too. The company today announced the launch of its first West Coast region (formally known under the poetic name of ‘us-west1’). The company first detailed its plans for opening this new region… Read More
Early demos of VR headsets talked a lot about the potential for designers working in virtual space with live 3D models, but DesignSpace, a prototype originally created at the 2015 AEC Hackathon in London, is one of the first real pieces of software that looks like it can deliver. The prototype by Thomas Van Bouwel uses the HTC Vive to let designers, architects and urban planners immerse… Read More
HomeTouch, the UK home care marketplace, has picked up £700,000 in new funding in a round led by Rocket Internet’s venture arm Global Founders Capital (GFC). Previous backer Passion Capital also participated, along with various angels, while I’m told the new capital will be used to invest in performance marketing and further product development. Read More
Dreamit Ventures’ accelerator has ditched the demo day, according to Chief Innovation Officer Steve Barsh. That’s not the only change the early-stage venture firm and accelerator has made of late.
Today, Dreamit unveiled a list of 25 new health and edtech startups launching from its revamped programs. A full list of those companies provided by Dreamit follows at the end of this… Read More
Bioz, a new search engine for life science experiments, wants to reduce the time it takes researchers to thumb through thousands of science articles published online and get them right to the findings relevant to their search. The Palo Alto startup does this by offering up article extracts from published science papers using natural language processing. The Bioz platform helps researchers… Read More
Keyboard app maker Swiftkey, which was acquired by Microsoft for $250 million in February, has officially launched its first product since that acquisition — and it’s an emoji-predicting keyboard app, called Swiftmoji. Read More
Facebook’s gamble of forcing users to download Messenger has paid off. Despite the backlash, Messenger has doubled its user count in 20 months to reach the one billion user mark five years after its debut. Messenger joins Facebook, its acquisition WhatsApp and Google’s YouTube in the billion user mobile user club. The app has racked up some other impressive stats. Each month,… Read More
If you’re tech-savvy and a serious writer, chances are you already know about Scrivener. The popular writing app has been available on OS X and Windows for years now. And it is now available on iOS for $19.99 as well. Scrivener is a flexible and powerful writing app that makes it easier to write long-form stuff — think about it as a sort of writing studio. Read More
The UK is sometimes called a nation of shopkeepers, and soon mobile payments company Square may be putting that to the test in the search for new business. Square Register — the company’s point of sale app used by merchants to manage their inventory, make invoices and take payments from customers — has quietly started to allow users to make payments in the UK, in UK pounds.… Read More
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo talked up some ambitious plans for the future of the New York City Subway during an address to a crowd at Brooklyn’s Transit Museum this week. At the top of the list is the addition of 1,025 new/refurbished subway cars, featuring some relatively high-tech amenities.
“New York deserves a world-class transportation network, worthy of its role as the… Read More
Online design platform Canva, which makes it easy for anyone to create professional graphics quickly – even if they don’t have a design background – is expanding its reach today with the launch of its first-ever iPhone application. Up until now, the company had offered a web application for around three years, and had been available on iPad for a year. With its iPhone… Read More
CargoX, a Brazilian startup that has been described as “Uber for trucks,” is announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding. The analogy is kind of irresistible, since Uber co-founder Oscar Salazary is one of CargoX’s investors — he’s certainly seen his share of “Uber for X” pitches, but he told me he sees a big opportunity here due to… Read More
