After having become one of the most viral mobile applications of all time, Pokémon Go will soon include advertising, according to its developer. In an interview with the Financial Times, Niantic CEO John Hanke said that “sponsored locations” would provide a new revenue stream, in addition to in-app purchases of power-ups and virtual items. In other words, retailers and… Read More
Despite holding the vast majority of the world’s wealth (or perhaps because of that), banks aren’t exactly hotbeds of cutting-edge tech, often relying on decades-old systems for everyday tasks. ThoughtMachine, a company led by ex-Google engineer Paul Taylor, is looking to change that with a modern, fully integrated, blockchain-based banking operating system called Vault OS. Read More
You don’t have to sit through a lot of pitches before your will-to-live-o-meter points to “kill me now.” Imagine you’re a VC, sitting through your fifteenth pitch that day — are you still going to be enthusiastic? Probably not. So what happens if you could instead feed your pitch deck into a chatbot that gives you feedback, suggestions and eventually invests… Read More
Here’s your weird but interesting technology story for the day. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is using M&M-dispensing drones to save endangered black-footed ferrets in rural Montana. The ferret’s main source of food is prairie dogs, which are being killed by the sylvatic plague, a disease spread by rats and fleas that has existed since the 1800s. To date,… Read More
Farmigo, an online farmer’s market that allowed consumers to shop for locally grown food via the web, then pick up those orders at nearby locations, says it will now be shutting down its delivery service. According to an announcement penned by Farmigo founder and CEO Benzi Ronen on the startup’s homepage, the company can no longer continue its community delivery operations… Read More
Halifax-based Spring Loaded Technology announced today that it has delivered the first 60 in of a planned 190 bionic knee braces to the Canadian Army, part of a $1 million (CAD) contract awarded to the company. The UpShots are the military grade version of the company’s assistive wearable, which utilizes liquid spring technology, promising lift output similar to those provided by the… Read More
Facebook invited a small group of reporters to its Prineville, OR data center this week. Most companies don’t even give their own employees access to their data centers (outside of the relatively small group of people it takes to keep the millions of servers inside up and running), but because Facebook open sources most of its server and networking designs, it’s a bit more open… Read More
Even if you’re an active photo or video creative, chances are that your gear will be gathering dust on a shelf at least part of the time. At the same time, other photographers and filmmakers are in need of equipment. If that sounds like a business opportunity, ShareGrid is way ahead of you, raising $1 million from Archer Gray and MHS Capital to grow beyond its test markets and open… Read More
It has never been more clear that transformational change to one of the world’s largest industries is just around the corner. Car ownership is supposed to change — and when it does, it is predicted to be one of the most monumental displacements of wealth the world economy has ever seen. But there are a lot of conflicting opinions out there. What is unequivocal is that there’s… Read More
The Skype team today announced that anyone using a Chromebook or Chrome on Linux can visit web.skype.com to make one-to-one and group voice calls on top of the messaging features they get today.
The Alpha version of Skype based on WebRTC inherits the same features as the Alpha version of the Skype for Linux client. Thanks to ORTC, users were able to make free voice and video calls on Skype… Read More
In the early morning hours I pad down the hallway in my grandmother’s ranch-style home in Martins Ferry, Ohio. It’s June 1986. I’m eleven years old and still in my pajamas. The house has cooled overnight and it’s even a bit chilly but as the sun rises the dark roof will warm up and grandma will send me into the basement or to the library across town. Until then I can… Read More
Pokémon Go has quickly become one of the most viral mobile applications of all time. The game is now the biggest ever in the U.S.; it has now topped Twitter’s daily users, and it sees people spending more time in its app than in Facebook, according to reports from various tracking firms. Read More
When you’re Land Rover, you can’t just test connected and autonomous vehicles on regular roads. You have to live up to your rugged, but polished brand, simultaneously. That’s precisely why the automaker is testing off-road connected convoy research vehicles. It’s all a part of the company’s ambitious plan to create a fleet of 100-plus research vehicles over the… Read More
The RT81 is a higher end, entry-level turntable. It will cost you a little bit more than some of the $100 plastic entry-level turntables out there, but it’s much higher quality both in terms of appearance and sound quality. Read More
Earlier this week, Facebook gave a small group of reporters a tour of its Prineville, OR data center. In the process, the company also showed off its mobile device lab for testing on physical devices new iOS and Android versions of the Facebook app, Messenger and Instagram. The mobile device lab currently occupies 60 racks in the data center. Each rack holds 32 phones, for a total of… Read More
Apple has been working on an unscripted TV series for a few months now. The TV show should be about the app economy, but it’s unclear how Apple is going to distribute it. Apple just announced an open casting call. Read More
A San Francisco startup called Trace Genomics wants to help farmers diagnose and improve the health of the soil where they want to raise crops before it’s harvest time and too late to change course.
So the startup has developed a soil testing kit and “pathogen panel,” that tells the growers of high-value crops, like berries or lettuce, whether or not their soil has harmful… Read More
Over the last few years, Unity Technologies has grown to become indispensable to the gaming industry and much of the entertainment industry as an engine for building experiences in one place and distributing them across a swath of platforms. Now, with the rise of augmented and virtual reality, we are rapidly approaching the likelihood that the future will be built on Unity.
To do that, the… Read More
Nobody loves change, especially when it hits our most beloved digital services like Gmail, Facebook, Spotify, or Instagram. The majority of the time we get over these changes and suddenly forget what these services were like before. It’s like seeing a friend’s new haircut — shocking at first, but eventually that haircut is the only one you’ve ever known. Remember… Read More
Ants are really good at lots of things. Lifting, communicating, ruining picnics. Turns out they’ve got the whole voting thing down to a science, too. When time comes to move nests, the plucky little insects vote by quorum. The democratic process is determined, at least in part, by how often they bump into one another.
Scientists believe that ants have a knack for determining their own… Read More
