title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
After the Satoshi Roundtable, is there a way to bridge the bitcoin divide? | Salil Deshpande | 2,016 | 3 | 13 |
A recent rift amongst the developers of Bitcoin, which originally started with a question over increasing the so-called block size (so that throughput of transactions can be increased), exposed deep divides about distributed governance; and has now ironically led to entrenched positions, flared tempers, public insult... |
Play your Steam first-person shooters in full virtual reality with MyDream Swift | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | As the launch dates of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive virtual reality headsets approach, so does the release of a ton of awesome VR gaming content. To gamers with full Steam libraries however, it’s kind of a shame that once they put the headset on, most of their favorite content is no longer available to enjoy. is l... |
The two misconceptions dominating the encryption debate | Nico Sell | 2,016 | 3 | 13 |
challenge affecting everyone –- startups, government, corporate systems and consumers, of dollars annually. Tragically, the one solution we are — mandating encryption backdoors — will undermine the integrity of our networks, as confirmed by information security and the government’s own and . For the tec... |
Building a brand-new Internet | Menny Barzilay | 2,016 | 3 | 13 |
We do not possess the ability to read the future, and yet we can predict with a high level of certainty that we will see more major cybersecurity incidents in 2016 and 2017. The world’s cybersecurity capability is not able to advance in line with the growing vulnerabilities. We are faced by more and more threats each... |
NASA tests first rocket engine designed to send humans to Mars | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | NASA has successfully tested their first RS-25 rocket engine for the agency’s next heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), for 500 seconds. The SLS, which will use 4 RS-25 engines in its core stage, is designed to take humans to deep space destinations like asteroids or Mars. NASA stated that “the next time r... |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 15 | null |
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales blasts “deranged” companies editing their own pages | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | “Companies think it’s a powerful marketing tool but I think they’re deranged and should leave us alone,” said Wales. Yet he believes that the best public relations teams know better and would rather avoid the embarrassment of getting caught publishing something misleading. He said that the rise of smartphones could lea... |
NowThis teams up with immigration lobby group FWD.us | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | Video news startup is partnering with , the immigration lobbying group backed by Mark Zuckerberg and , to tackle one of the biggest issues in this year’s election cycle. Last night at South by Southwest, the two organizations announced a partnership where NowThis is creating a video series focused on immigration. N... |
Innovation center for black and Latina founders opens this summer in Atlanta | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | , an organization geared toward advancing equity in tech, is opening an innovation center for black and Latina female founders in tech this summer. Located in downtown Atlanta, GA, the BIG Innovation Center will be home to a four-month long accelerator program as well as a paid developer internship program for students... |
Sony to buy the remaining half of Sony/ATV shares from Michael Jackson’s estate for $750M | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Sony has agreed to purchase the remaining 50 percent of Sony/ATV from Michael Jackson’s estate for a total of $750 million. The music publishing company was created in 1995 as a joint venture between ATV, which was owned by the late King of Pop, and Sony. It now owns or administers over 2.8 million copyrights, includin... |
Verizon signs direct roaming agreement with Cuba’s state telecom | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Verizon has signed an agreement that makes it the second U.S. carrier to offer direct roaming in Cuba. The deal with Etecsa, a government-owned telecom, will enable direct voice calls between U.S. and Cuba. In November, Verizon rival Sprint with Etesca. That deal was actually announced in Cuba using one of its Pay-As... |
Why Apple is right to resist the FBI | John Eden | 2,016 | 3 | 13 |
The FBI wants Apple to do something no private company has ever been forced to do: Specifically, the FBI wants Apple to build a new version of its mobile operating system (iOS, or GovOS) so that the contents of an iPhone can be removed from an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the gunmen in the San Bernardino shoot... |
Ulysses for iPhone makes me consider writing articles on my phone | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | I write hundreds of words every day on my phone. At first it was just emails and text messages, but now it’s also Slack conversations, notes and countless of messages of various sizes and shapes in all sorts of messaging apps. And yet, there’s one thing I’ve refrained from doing so far — writing TechCrunch posts on my ... |
Phonvert has a plan to convert old smartphones into IoT nodes | Jay Donovan | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | As humanity creates more and more smartphones each year there is an unintended glut of still capable yet less desirable one-year-old or two-year-old smartphones that take the backseat to new models. While many of these retired smartphones still work and have usable sensors like cameras, accelerometers, touch screens an... |
Lyft and GM partner on Express Drive, a rental service that paves the way for autonomous cars | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Two months after a $500 million investment in transportation startup to work on autonomous cars, the pair are launching their first service together. No, it’s not a self-driving car fleet (yet); it’s a short-term rental program called Express Drive: GM will provide all-in rental cars to Lyft drivers, who will pay... |
Watch us beat the heck out of each other in Disney’s new fighter, Marvel Battlegrounds | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Tomorrow morning Disney will launch Marvel Battlegrounds, a new four-player superhero fighting game built on top of their Disney Infinity platform. Disney Infinity producer John Vignocchi stopped by TechCrunch HQ to give us an early peek… and things got intense. We here at TechCrunch tend to take everything a little ... |
Defeated Go world champion beats DeepMind AI in penultimate match | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 3 | 13 | Machines 3, humans 1… That’s the current score in a five-match series being played out between DeepMind’s AlphaGo and human Go world champion, Lee Sedol. Last week the Google-owned AI chalked up a by winning the opening bout with Sedol — the first time a machine had outplayed a world class professional Go player. The... |
Google loses Android antitrust appeal in Russia | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Google has lost an appeal in a Russian court against an antitrust ruling pertaining to its Android mobile OS (via ). The competition complaint was brought against Android back in February 2015 by local company Yandex — aka the “Google of Russia” — which had argued that Google’s contract for Android broke competition r... |
European Space Agency’s ExoMars successfully starts its journey to the red planet | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | The first phase of , an uncrewed Mars mission from the European Space Agency (ESA), successfully launched today from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Lifting off on a Russian Proton-M rocket, the Mars-bound spacecraft has begun its 7 month, 300 million mile long journey and is scheduled to arrive in October. Signal from conf... |
Validating adtech: Innovation is a stronger proof point than share price | Hagai Tal | 2,016 | 3 | 14 |
Adtech is in trouble because many firms have gotten the cold shoulder from venture capital. Supposedly. Another way to say that, of course, is that smart venture capitalists passed on startups that failed to demonstrate how they would add value to the space. So is that bad news or good news for adtech? Unfortunately,... |
Blooming measures your heart and brain to reduce stress at work | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Finnish startup is aiming to help bouncing-off-the-walls-stressed office workers regain control of their lives by using wearable tech. The service includes monitoring and tracking stress levels, plus recommendation software and meditation advice to help give workers the space to stop and smell the roses. To help its ... |
Google doubles max ChromeOS bug bounty to $100k | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | After shelling out $2 million in rewards to security bounty hunters in 2015, Google it is doubling the reward for reporting serious security flaws, raising the top bounty from $50,000 to $100,000. Google has been pretty serious about its security on Chrome; it has had a in place since 2010, eligible to hackers who f... |
Unlocking blockchain for the underbanked | Jackie Hyland | 2,016 | 3 | 14 |
As 2015 came to a close and the new year began, many thought leaders in the financial technology space made their and in One of the most prominent technologies that repeatedly appeared on these lists was the blockchain. More familiarly known as the technology behind the bitcoin digital currency, blockchain has e... |
Trainline buys Captain Train for up to $189 million | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | We hear a lot about how companies like Uber are transforming car-based transportation, but today comes news of another play in the sector, this time covering rail services. , a U.K.-based ticket service for railway and long-distance bus journeys, has acquired , a Paris-based competitor that sells tickets for rail jou... |
Michael Goguen’s counter-complaint calls accuser an “exotic dancer” who was “looking for a payday” | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Michael Goguen, the longtime venture capitalist who was following a stunning , has just filed a in San Mateo County Court that proposes the accusations against him are a myth. In reaction to claims that Goguen sexually and emotionally abused a woman named Amber Laurel Baptiste for more than a decade, and then fail... |
Netflix pulls its Android Beta Program, says it was not meant for consumers to join | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Netflix confirmed this morning the existence of what appeared to be a new , but says it did not intend to make it available to consumers via Google Play. In addition, the company tells us that features in the beta app should not be taken as indication of those planned for forthcoming releases. That said, some testers ... |
Blockai uses the blockchain to help artists protect their intellectual property | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | While most of the discussions around blockchain have , startup is looking at something different — helping artists, photographers and other creators register their work so that they can protect it from potential copyright infringement. CEO Nathan Lands is pitching this as an intermediate step between registering you... |
Xbox Live now supports cross-platform multiplayer with PS4 | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | At this point, there’s very little difference between the and the PlayStation 4. But there was one key differentiating point. Xbox gamers could only play with Xbox and PC players as Microsoft was restricting access to the multiplayer component. Microsoft that game developers can now create cross-platform multiplaye... |
Google launches new services for Android game developers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Google today announced a number of new services for game developers at its annual at the Game Developers Conference. They include tools for managing virtual goods and currencies, the launch of the Video Recording API so developers can make it easier for players to stream and share videos to YouTube, and a new ad type... |
#CSForAll: Ensuring tech access for all students | Cullen White | 2,016 | 3 | 14 |
On the heels of the (#CSForAll) announcement and the celebration of , we are excited about the work being done to make STEM opportunities accessible for all kids. The #CSForAll initiative is a plan to ensure that every student in America has access to a robust and rigorous computer science education. The initiativ... |
YouTube block comes and goes in Georgia amid government sex tape allegations | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Google’s , the world’s biggest video site, is no stranger to getting blocked in some countries when content uploaded by users runs against state policies on media and public information. The latest chapter in that story comes from Georgia — the country, not the U.S. state — where became inaccessible on the country’s... |
FinLeap’s solarisBank to offer Banking-as-a-Platform so startups can ride fintech gravy train | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | Offering what it calls Banking-as-a-Platform, , the German fintech ‘startup factory’, has hatched its latest venture. This time the Berlin-based company builder (to use the preferred terminology) is investing and betting on the underlying regulatory and financial technology infrastructure — the picks ‘n’ shovels, if y... |
Apple’s new iPhone SE unlikely to make a splash in Asia despite low price | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Apple’s newest addition to the iPhone family may be its cheapest phone yet at $399, but isn’t likely to move the needle in emerging markets, where the lion’s share of growth in the handset industry lies. found that global smartphone sales have reached their slowest growth rate since 2008 as smartphone saturation set... |
Cygnus launches to space station with new experiments on board | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | The Cygnus cargo vehicle was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 11:05pm EST to begin its 3-day journey to the International Space Station (ISS). Launching on top of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, Cygnus was carrying 7,500 pounds of food, water, science experiments, and other necessary suppl... |
Malaysia-based Nuren Group raises $2M for its wedding and parenting sites | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | , a Malaysian-based company that runs community and e-commerce sites for women, has raised a $2 million Series A led by Gobi Partners. The capital will be used for hiring and to add more services and e-commerce features to and , Nuren’s wedding sites, and its upcoming parenting marketplace . Combined with its seed ... |
Why Quartz’s news app is so much bigger than news | Tom Popomaronis | 2,016 | 3 | 22 |
Have you tried the Quartz , yet? Please do. Imagine a text conversation with a bot that sends you a topic. You’re then presented with two choices: Either tap a string of relevant (and surprisingly entertaining) emojis, which is like pressing “learn more,” or tap an “anything else?” button to have another topic s... |
Famous dodges Apple iTunes ban with web app | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | The Famous app got itself banned from Apple’s App Store about a month ago. They sidestepped the ban by , and is today back on an iOS device near you in the form of a . The Famous interface, in which your correspondent is the world’s biggest fan of Twitter. Which is true on several levels. The App Store ban wasn’t the... |
Instagram beefs up web interface with notifications tab | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Instagram began as a mobile-only service, but now it’s enhancing its web version so you can use the service without opening your phone. Today on web that’s identical to the notifications tab inside its app. Here you’ll be able to see who Liked or commented on your posts, or who followed you or tagged you. It’s now av... |
All 60 startups that launched at Y Combinator Winter 2016 Demo Day 1 | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | “You’ll notice we have many more startups that aren’t in the traditional software category,” said Y Combinator President Sam Altman at the start of its Winter 2016 Demo Day 1. While once upon a time YC was known for legions of social and marketplace apps no one needed, it’s branched out. Now Silicon Valley’s top accele... |
New findings from Pluto mission reveal a dynamic world | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | The New Horizons science team has published new findings from their mission to Pluto in a series of 5 articles in the journal . The data from the papers reveal that Pluto is much more geologically diverse and dynamic than anyone could have imagined. “These five detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto – ... |
Why you should fear artificial intelligence | Doc Huston | 2,016 | 3 | 22 |
I have voraciously read endless pro and con scenarios about artificial intelligence since first writing about it years ago. At this point, there is no doubt that concerns about the dangers of runaway AI raised by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Bill Joy and others are genuine. There also is no doubt whatsoeve... |
Truebill raises seed funding to help you cancel unwanted subscriptions | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | , a startup that helps people track and cancel their subscriptions, announced it has raised a small round of seed funding. The round includes $120,000 from Y Combinator, with additional funding from angel investors like David Marcus (formerly a PayPal executive and now vice president of messaging products at Facebook),... |
Batteries and all, EVs are greener than gasoline | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Electric vehicles come out of the gate with green cred. They don’t even have tailpipes because they don’t have any emissions while they’re driving. But do EVs deserve their goody-too-green rep? A report from the says they do indeed. Even if you take into account the battery, the manufacturing process and even the rec... |
Adobe announces new data-sharing effort for cross-device ad targeting | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Adobe unveiled a new push for cross-device targeting today at its Adobe Summit. Amit Ahuja, the general manager of data management for Adobe Marketing, explained the product to me beforehand, and he laid out the problem in a pretty straightforward manner: “If you don’t know who the user is across different devices, cle... |
Domo takes on Slack with $131 million at $2 billion+ valuation | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Domo also today , a mix of about 1,000 free and freemium apps, which can be customized for any company. The company is also introducing a free messaging service with threaded conversations, which James refers to as a Slack competitor. “By making Buzz available for free to everyone in the organization and putting busin... |
The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is slightly slower than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Apple doesn’t like to talk about specs. But it turns out my boss Matthew Panzarino already has review units of and iPhone SE. So nobody is going to stop us if we want to run on these new devices. The result is both interesting and unsurprising. While the 9.7-inch iPad Pro features an A9X chip like its big brother, ... |
8tracks is raising a $30 million crowdfunding round | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | Music startup has always had a strong sense of community. But the startup is taking this one step further by raising $30 million from its own community. Instead of asking money from venture capitalists, the company has started an equity crowdfunding campaign on and it’s been working well. Around 30,000 community me... |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 14 | null |
Facebook joins WhatsApp in dropping BlackBerry support | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | BlackBerry-loving device clutchers are facing a tricky choice if they wish to continue to interact with their friends: WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook Messenger all hit the “unfriend” button on the struggling phone maker’s latest operating system, BlackBerry 10. Facebook-owned WhatsApp made on the BlackBerry platform... |
Loverly raises $2 million more to put a wedding planner in your pocket | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | A new service from the online wedding inspiration startup wants to put the capabilities of a wedding planner right in your pocket. Officially launching today, Loverly is unveiling that will send brides and grooms a list of vetted wedding vendors that match the couple’s budget, needs and who have availability for th... |
Houzz opens its Commerce API to third-party vendors | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | , the home remodelling site with a focus on giving you house envy, today announced that it is opening up its Commerce API for third-party developers. While you may mostly look at Houzz as a mobile app and website that features beautiful home remodelling photography in an effort to connect you to the professionals behin... |
David Lee is back with a new fund: Refactor Capital | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | David Lee, a former Google executive who for several years ran the seed-stage venture fund SV Angel, is back with his own new firm, shows an . The outfit is called Refactor Capital and it’s apparently targeting $50 million for its debut fund. Refactor, which was incorporated , doesn’t appear to have a site up and run... |
DARPA kicks off $2m Grand Challenge focused on intelligently splitting up radio spectrum | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it’s not an automation moonshot like the self-driving car challenges of the early 2000s or the recent (and ) . The Defense Department’s R&D wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of real-world applications: radio frequency spectrum sp... |
What marketers can learn from the economy of convenience | Justin Gray | 2,016 | 3 | 25 |
If you think about it, money is a ridiculous concept. Without going into a gold standard history lesson, let’s just say the idea that I can hold this , this little cloth rectangle of varying denomination, and exchange it for tangible goods and services is, at the very least, a system of belief. How we carry our mon... |
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel nabs another $1.3 billion for Founders Fund | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | Peter Thiel’s decades old pulled together another $1.3 billion dollars today for Founders Fund VI. Thiel, a billionaire investor in Facebook and SpaceX and co-founder of PayPal, will remain at the helm, with partners Lauren Gross, Ken Howery, Geoff Lewis, Scott Nolan, Luke Nosek and Brian Singerman. Founders Fund is ... |
Live is having a moment | Tarikh Korula | 2,016 | 3 | 25 |
Twitter, which turned 10 this week, has apparently made Live its . At an all-hands meeting last month, Mark Zuckerberg declared live video a top priority for Facebook. Clearly, Zuck’s toward Twitter’s Periscope, a mobile live streaming app which itself with Meerkat. Amazon is expanding its recently acquired live ga... |
2020 is set to be the biggest year yet for Mars exploration | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | 2020 is set to be a good year for Mars exploration. The United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Europe and Russia all have planned Mars missions that are scheduled to launch, or likely to launch, in that year. There have been more than 40 to Mars throughout history. Some of these missions were failures, while... |
Microsoft apologizes for hijacked chatbot Tay’s ‘wildly inappropriate’ tweets | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | The colossal and highly public earlier this week raised many questions: How could this happen? Who is responsible for it? And is it true that Hitler did nothing wrong? After a day of silence (and presumably of penance), the company has undertaken to answer at least some of these questions. It issued a mea culpa in th... |
Beware the pitfalls of Silicon Valley | Dieter Gerdemann | 2,016 | 3 | 25 |
A recent article in titled “Will Facebook Enslave Us?” captures a sentiment prevalent among companies around the world: admiration for Silicon Valley — albeit, with a dash of fear. International media outlets eagerly cover disruption developing in labs up and down the San Francisco peninsula. Boards of directors ar... |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 03.25.16 | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | – Frank Radice, Robert Scoble Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Gillmor Gang on Facebook G3 on Facebook |
500 Startups brings its ‘Distro Dojo’ program to LA for post-seed startups looking for big growth | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | 500 Startups has been aiming to globalize its brand and work toward attracting the attention of young, cool companies outside the Bay Area echo chamber. This has taken 500’s investments into distant corners of the world, with dedicated funds and accelerators scoping out what has amounted to a prolific number of investm... |
Toyota and Lexus will have standard automatic braking by 2017 | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | Last week, announced that 20 auto manufacturers and three agencies had agreed to include as standard equipment by 2022. was one of those 20 companies, but this week they upped the AEB ante: Nearly every Toyota and Lexus model and trim level will have standard AEB by 2017. That’s next year. Many models already off... |
With Privacy, you can create virtual debit cards to protect your online payments | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | Meet , a new startup with a confusing name but an interesting product. Privacy lets you generate a virtual burner card every time you need to enter your credit card number on the web. Your actual credit card number stays safe, and you get more control over your online subscriptions. Privacy works with a Google Chrome ... |
Google launches the Android Experiments I/O Challenge for open-source app developers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | Google is launching the today in an effort to bring more interesting open-source apps to its . The three winners of the challenge, which will run until April 13, will get a trip to this year’s . The five runners-up will get Nexus 6Ps (which, in turn, makes me think Google’s I/O giveaway this year will be a Nexus 6P... |
Snapchat briefly snags the number one spot on U.S. App Store for the first time | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | Snapchat, the rapidly growing social application favored by mobile’s youngest users, has hit a notable milestone: for the first time ever, its iOS application reached the top of the iTunes App Store, where it briefly become the #1 overall free application in the U.S. While Snapchat is almost always in the top five or t... |
After numerous delays, Microsoft finally starts shipping its $22K Surface Hub | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | If you’re in the market for a giant 84-inch 4K touchscreen computer (and have ), today is a good day. After , Microsoft today its to business customers. Surface Hub comes in both the giant 84-inch version and a smaller 55-inch HD edition for a relatively affordable $8,999. You’ll still need a stand for them, to... |
Netflix is making videos look like garbage on AT&T and Verizon | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | If you’ve tried streaming Master of None from your tablet running on Verizon or AT&T, chances are it looked like a big pile of unwatchable pixels. It turns out Netflix is quietly capping videos on these networks so that you don’t burn through your entire data cap in just a few hours. How bad do these videos look? Netfl... |
Immediately’s Branko Cerny on the rise of bottom up sales and the importance of branding | Harry Stebbings | 2,016 | 3 | 25 |
One of the most groundbreaking themes in the world of enterprise sales in the last few years has been the rise of bottom up sales techniques due to its ability to allow startups to target hundreds of paths into a company. In contrast to the more traditional top down, generally involving the sale to a CIO or VP, the b... |
Snapchat reportedly acquires Bitmoji maker Bitstrips for $100 million | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | is reporting that Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging platform that has , has agreed to acquire Bitstrips, the folks behind popular emoji-creation service Bitmoji. Though we haven’t received confirmation from Bitstrips or Snapchat, Fortune’s sources say that the deal is “in the ballpark” of $100 million. The idea behin... |
Tinder rival Bumble is majority-owned by European dating behemoth Badoo | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | It was already on public record that Andrey Andreev, the low-profile Russian founder of European dating behemoth Badoo, is an investor in dating app , the Tinder competitor founded by ex-Tinder founding team member Whitney Wolfe. However, TechCrunch can now reveal a number of previously unreported details of Wolfe a... |
Student founder turns down Microsoft and Google to build Bae, an app for black singles | Kaya Thomas | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 22 | null |
Switcher Studio turns your iPad into a live video editing studio | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | While improvements in camera-phone technology have led to our mobile devices slowly but surely replacing clunky single-purpose cameras, most heavy editing and production still has to be done on desktops. This is especially true for live video, which often requires a full mixing board and production studio. Enter , a m... |
Micromanufacturing the future | Dmitry Slepov | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
Micromanufacturing. As soon as I finish typing the word, my Grammarly spell checker promptly underscores it in red and suggests a replacement: “micro-manufacturing.” But this new spelling is about to go mainstream. When I say micromanufacturing, I don’t mean making tiny (micro-scale) components. There’s another defin... |
UPDATE: Reddit’s firing up a thread on the Panama Papers leak | Jonathan Shieber | 2,016 | 4 | 3 | UPDATE: An earlier version of this story linked to an earlier expose’ conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on offshore companies. The post has been edited. The good folks at Reddit about the massive we reported earlier this evening. Meanwhile the hits just keep on coming from news ... |
As sanctions lift, Western companies can meet a thriving Iranian e-commerce industry | Amir Bozorgzadeh | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
Despite the perceptions from many outside of the country, Iranians haven’t been twiddling their thumbs, waiting idly all these years for sanctions relief. The country has long since accustomed itself to be self-sufficient, and the e-commerce industry in Iran is no exception. Over one-third — or 39 percent of Iranians... |
Africa Roundup: DealDey Acquisition Creates VC Exits | Jake Bright | 2,016 | 4 | 3 | Africa’s e-commerce startups continue to tally outside investment. This time through of Nigerian online shopping site for an undisclosed amount. DealDey is a Groupon like startup that aggregates daily discounts on popular goods and services. The venture previously raised at least from the Swedish investment firm ... |
Documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm reveal a global web of corruption | Jonathan Shieber | 2,016 | 4 | 3 | It started with , and what it has become is, quite simply, yet seen on the Internet. All day, the Internet has been abuzz with stories — roughly 2.6 terabytes of documents, related to hundreds of thousands of offshore companies, leaked from a small, relatively unknown Panamanian law firm called . While the -base... |
The insurance tech equation | Choon Yan | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
Insurance policies can be complex, and some policyholders may not understand all the fees and coverages included in a policy. Indeed, people typically buy policies on unfavorable terms. In 2014, two major insurers, for misrepresentation of the coverage network, which caused delays for their consumers in accessing n... |
Platforms are the real powerhouses in Silicon Valley’s business landscape | Vivek Wadhwa | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
One of the most important lessons that Silicon Valley learned, that gives it a strategic advantage, is to think bigger than products and business models: it builds platforms. The fastest growing and most disruptive companies in history — Google, Amazon, Uber, AirBnb, and eBay—aren’t focused on selling products, they ... |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 25 | null |
Hollywood vs. VR | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 4 | 3 | Let us all take a moment to celebrate the remarkable resilience of Hollywood. As “the music industry finds itself fighting over pennies while waving goodbye to dollars,” to the New York Times; as the publishing industry finds itself increasingly eclipsed by Amazon; as “the number of people watching TV is falling off ... |
AccorHotels acquires Onefinestay for $170 million | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | is acquiring for at least $170 million (£117 million). The company is also committing to a $70 million investment in Onefinestay (£50 million) over the next few years. Onefinestay is a London-based startup that provides an Airbnb for high-end homes combined with a hotel-like service for hosts and travelers. The star... |
Virtual reality is about to go mainstream, but a lack of content threatens to hold it back | Tony Scherba | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
Technology is surrounding us; its surface is becoming more complex, pliable and familiar to the eye. Virtual reality is no longer creeping into the : It’s leaping. Just last month, secretive startup received more than $793 million in new funding through Google, Qualcomm and others, quickening its progress toward... |
RobinHood’s chief executive on the importance of design in fintech | Harry Stebbings | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
RobinHood, the no-fee stock trading mobile phone app, was able to attract 1 million people to their waiting list before a product was even launched. In this podcast, chief executive Baiju Bhatt discusses what it was about their initial value proposition that made so many users convert, and the integral role design pl... |
Facebook’s tool to help the blind “see” images just launched for iOS | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Facebook has launched a tool, Automatic Alternative Text, for blind and visually impaired people to “see” images on the site. For people using screen readers to identify what’s displayed, AAT uses object recognition technology to generate descriptions of photos on Facebook. This tool, led by Facebook’s accessibility te... |
Marketers should stop relying on hover rate | Scott Knoll | 2,016 | 4 | 3 |
For many, the promise of digital advertising is the wealth of information that comes with every impression they buy. However, all this data becomes virtually useless when marketers employ the wrong success metrics for their campaigns. What use is it to know your click-through rates if more than half of those clicks a... |
An insider’s handbook for IoT startups | Ryan Margoles | 2,016 | 4 | 4 |
Tips are everywhere. There’s an abundance of generic advice available for how to build teams and culture, how to fundraise, how to be productive, how to stay above the noise… But what about specific advice? Specific tips for what differentiates the leaders from the followers. And even more specifically, a guide to di... |
Laurene Powell Jobs’s XQ America project enters a new phase this Friday | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | An untold number of schools will be receiving some happy news this coming Friday. According to an on-stage appearance today at the in San Francisco, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs revealed that a six-month-old national education challenge she’s backing called , is announcing which U.S. schools advance to the nex... |
Disney to “broaden the scope” of succession planning as its COO departs | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Thomas Staggs, chief operating officer at The Walt Disney Corporation, is stepping down. Staggs is as the successor to CEO Bob Iger, so this makes the entertainment giant’s plans after Iger’s departure seem a lot less certain. Staggs has been at Disney for 26 years, and he was recently to COO, a move that cemented ... |
Experience Here, the augmented audio device from Doppler Labs | Felicia Shivakumar | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Doppler Labs’s augmented audio device, Here, seems to be all the rage in music hardware these days. Doppler recently won a and will begin a partnership with Coachella starting next week. Each Coachella attendee gets an exclusive code to skip the waitlist and purchase devices to wear at the week-long music festival.... |
NASA’s new sea level site puts climate change papers, data, and tools online | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | NASA took the wraps off a new website on Monday dedicated to tracking global changes in the sea level. It’s packed full of free online resources that will likely be useful to teachers, the climate-change-curious, and anyone just looking to dig into publicly available data. is NASA instead of NOAA because the site focu... |
Microsoft’s mobile problem may not be a problem at all | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | When Microsoft announced its Windows 10 strategy last year, the thinking was that and finally bring the Windows phone out of the doldrums where it’s been virtually forever. The idea was you could develop once for Windows 10 desktop and easily share that code on any device, making it impossibly attractive for develope... |
NASA partners with Microsoft to launch “mixed reality” Mars exhibit | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | NASA has collaborated with Microsoft to create a new mixed-reality exhibit known as “ “, allowing the public to explore the red planet with holographic tour guides. The exhibit will open this summer in Florida at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Featuring the second person on the moon, Dr. Buzz Aldrin, and ... |
FAA committee proposes official categories for drones that fly near crowds | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | A committee of industry representatives appointed by the FAA turned in recommendations suggesting a four-tiered system for classifying drones and how they may (or mayn’t) interact with crowds. — the FAA declined to provide it to TechCrunch, though it should be public soon. The rulemaking committee was , and its reco... |
Auka brings Google Cloud-powered banking to Europe | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Norwegian startup is setting its sights on hitting two birds with one stone: helping banks to get into compliance with EU regulation and rolling out high-tech banking to customers across Europe. The company is a white-label service aimed at retail banks and is the first fully licensed and regulated payments infrastru... |
Salesforce acquires MetaMind | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | , a Palo Alto-based AI startup founded in July 2014, is being acquired by Salesforce. According to a published at the company’s website by CEO Richard Socher — a Stanford PhD who studied machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision — Salesforce plans to use its technology to “furth... |
The SEC is voicing concern about ‘eye-popping’ startup valuations | Shriram Bhashyam | 2,016 | 4 | 4 |
Consider it an early warning, or maybe a gentle reminder, from your friendly securities regulator. SEC Chair Mary Jo White came to the heart of Silicon Valley to deliver a speech at Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance on March 31, 2016, which touched on a variety of topics but was rather forthr... |
Simplify your stock-picking process with these apps | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Investing in the stock market made easy — that’s the goal of these apps, which make investing more convenient and help you keep tabs on the market updates. And you don’t have to be a finance whiz to work them. Trade stocks without fees on . After a quick registration, use Robinhood to access market data and quotes i... |
Medic Mobile locks $1 million grant to help community health workers in the developing world | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 4 | 4 | Tech nonprofit has attained $1 million in unrestricted grant funding from the for apps that help health workers deliver care to people who lack reasonable access to doctors and hospitals. According to Medic Mobile founder Josh Nesbit, about 10,000 health workers in developing nations use Medic Mobile’s apps today t... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.