People often misunderstand Y Combinator’s accelerator, with its broad range of startups that sometimes pivot before launch. That’s in part because YC’s president and spokeperson Sam Altman is too busy to tell its stories over and over, and he’s more of a techie type than a polish … | Continue reading
The lights around me are flashing bright white, then blue, then purple. "Where Are Ü Now" is blaring through speakers that hang from the ceiling above me. Both of these details are making me feel weird, because it's 1PM and I'm at the New York International Auto Show. Manhattan's … | Continue reading
Samsung Gear VR owners now have a lot more TV to watch: Hulu has launched an app on the Oculus store. Much like the Netflix VR app, Hulu’s take allows you to watch videos in a virtual setting. But whereas Netflix only includes a living room environment and an empty ‘void’ space, … | Continue reading
New roads (rather than new walls) are, therefore, the key to reinventing the American economy. Read More | Continue reading
Guest post by Gib Bassett (@gibbassett), gib.bassett@oracle.com “Companies will invest in digital customer experiences to improve experiences for all customers and employees.” – Brian Solis I’m a huge proponent of the power of digital transformation to help brick and mortar retai … | Continue reading
Rusty Moyher's Astro Party [Free] is a pretty cool game, being a phone-friendly version of Astro Duel [$4.99 (HD)] which is on iPad and Apple TV. The one downside to Astro Party is that it has only supported 2 players on one iPhone, compared to the 4 of its bigger sibling. But no … | Continue reading
I remember when we fought the war over video games' status as art. We lost a lot of good women and men to the Battle of Citizen Kane of Video Games, and I still grimace on the anniversary of the Three Day Siege of Ludonarrative Dissonance. I vowed to never forget the sacrifices c … | Continue reading
Not used to being a latecomer to the innovation game, Google is actively developing a voice recognition device to go toe to toe with the Amazon Echo. | Continue reading
Are you ready for a big fight over Yahoo’s control? Activist investor Starboard Value LP is really unhappy about Yahoo’s current state and wants everyone to know about it. In an open letter to shareholders, the activist hedge fund is saying that many things are broken at Yahoo ri … | Continue reading
Here are some of the epic tweets that signaled growth spurts in the social network. | Continue reading
Who’s using Facebook Messenger? Facebook’s stats department will tell you that every month, more than 800 million people use it and 9.5 billion photos are sent through it. But on the rare occasions I use Messenger, I chat briefly with old college friends or random people I know t … | Continue reading
Classic gamers need to run, not walk, to Steam and grab ‘Atari Vault’ — a collection of 100 classic Atari 2600 games featuring Asteroids, Centipede, Pong and over 90 others retro titles. The Atari 2600 was a breakthrough in modern computing as it stuck your arcades favorite right … | Continue reading
Xbox Live Gold subscribers on Xbox One are about to get four highly regarded hits in April. Microsoft announced its lineup for Games With Gold in April, which you will get access to if you subscribe to the Xbox Live Gold subscription for $60 per year or $10 a month. The company h … | Continue reading
UK-based vacuum maker Dyson is possibly working on an electric car, according to government documents that may have accidentally disclosed this information. According to The Guardian, the UK government says it will shell out £174 million — or $246 million —€” in taxpayer funding … | Continue reading
It was December 31, 2014. In Shanghai, thousands flocked to the historic and picturesque Bund, where there had been reports a light show would take place to ring in the new year. Unfortunately, too many people had the same idea. A dangerously dense crowd formed, and at a viewing … | Continue reading
In late 2015, Vivid Games released Real Boxing 2 [Free] with tie-in branding to the movie Creed, adding Creed to the game's title. Well, with the movie having run its course in theaters and out now on video, the game has gotten a rebrand with some new content staying in the same … | Continue reading
If competing against yourself isn’t enough, Microsoft Band is launching a social option. With its latest update, Band users can now choose to connect to Facebook, setting fitness goals and competing with Facebook friends over burned calories, running time, bike rides, and more. E … | Continue reading
The NFL failed to account for more than 100 concussions in studies that the league used to show the rate of concussions among players, making the injury appear less common than it actually was, according to an investigation published today by The New York Times. Continue rea … | Continue reading
Launched this week, London-based startup Trax & Wax is the first vinyl subscription service focused on sub-genres within dance music. It works with the most prominent distributors of dance music including Rush Hour, Clone, Syncrophone and Word & Sound to curate a personalized mon … | Continue reading
Samsung wants to change its internal culture to make the 300,000-person company operate more like a startup. Executives are planning to sign a pledge to pivot the company away from its traditional corporate structure to a more open working environment, Reuters reports. Changes wi … | Continue reading
(Reuters) – U.S. officials said on Thursday that they are hopeful they will be able to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters without help from Apple Inc, but said the national debate over privacy and encryption must still be resolved. Apple has been fighting … | Continue reading
Gmail now has a dedicated notification system to warn users if they’re at risk of opening emails from insecure services or opening bad Web links. In Gmail, if someone sends you an email that was sent from an insecure service, a red ‘unlock’ icon will alert you. Gogole says that s … | Continue reading
Sony is launching a dedicated mobile game development studio entitled ForwardWorks.Beginning operation on 1st April, ForwardWorks is based on Tokyo and will be courting the Japanese and Asian markets - at least initially. It will also be making games using PlayStation-exclusive I … | Continue reading
Ethereum is currently one of the most sought after cryptocurrency protocols. The potential to develop and use distributed applications (dapps) on its decentralized blockchain is too attractive to be dismissed. It is relatively a much younger protocol than Bitcoin. However, the de … | Continue reading
Niantic Labs is giving us the first official look at this highly anticipated mobile game that brings the Pokemon universe to the mobile market. Pokemon GO looks beautiful. | Continue reading
Atari Vault, a collection of 100 classic Atari 2600 games including Asteroids, Centipede, and Tempest, is now available for download on Steam. The bundle, first announced back in January, is only for PC and costs $19.99. However, you can nab it on sale today for $16.99. Naturally … | Continue reading
One of the things we saw at GDC was a super secret game which was so clandestine we had to go up to a hotel room to see it. A quick elevator ride later and I was sitting on a couch watching the reveal of Infinite Arms, another mobile game which also leans heavily on | Continue reading
Big data software company Cloudera has acquired Sense, a startup that built a cloud service that enables multiple data scientists to collaborate and share self-service analytics reports for their colleagues to use anytime. Cloudera hasn’t issued a press release, but Sense did pub … | Continue reading
Coming right off the parade of exotics and hypercars in Geneva, it's not easy for the New York Auto Show to make a splash. Still, there was enough news to keep us occupied for a couple days: we got a refreshed Godzilla with more power, a crazy Lincoln Navigator concept SUV with g … | Continue reading
French startup Mapstr is a nifty bookmarking apps, but for your favorite places. It lets you keep track of restaurants, bars, shops or your friends’ homes. With today’s update, you can now get walking, driving and public transport directions with integrations with Google Maps, Ub … | Continue reading
Commentators routinely recommend that PR and marketing professionals be honest and transparent on social media. Yet some PR observers wonder if tweets from the San Francisco-area Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) showed too much candor. BART is an overburdened public transit system p … | Continue reading
Journalists and investors are being overrun with pitches for chatbots and conversational interfaces at the moment. But is this a fad or a genuine step forward in the technology industry? Chat-based interfaces have long been an important part of life for users of apps like WeChat … | Continue reading
Music video service Vevo is getting smarter today thanks to integrations with Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube, which it will use to offer more personalized recommendations for its mobile apps based on the data you provide. In the past, Vevo asked new users to manually approve artis … | Continue reading
Genome trailblazer J. Craig Venter, along with a team of researchers, has now created a minimal genome for bacteria — one that contains only 473 genes, less than the smallest-known naturally-occurring bacterial organism. The new genome may help provide crucial clues to scientists … | Continue reading
World Cup travelers who came to Brazil in 2014 probably weren't the source of the country's Zika virus outbreak, a study published today in Science reveals. A DNA analysis of seven Zika virus samples suggests the virus arrived in Brazil sometime between May and December 2013 — a … | Continue reading
Bethesda Softworks is drumming up excitement about its May 13 release of Doom through a first-of-its-kind tournament. It will pit professional sports athletes and YouTube stars against each other in a multiplayer Doom showdown. Doom is one of the most anticipated games of the yea … | Continue reading
Elite Dangerous is getting the voice of Captain James T. Kirk himself, William Shatner, as the legendary actor has lent his unique vocal stylings to an upcoming voice pack.Revealed in the following trailer, Shatner offers over 1300 phrases as the voice of ship AI Orion. The voice … | Continue reading
There's a new version of the Swarm app for iOS and Android out today, and its headline feature is a revamped profile screen that displays more stats about your check-in history. The app now displays a donut chart for the last 60 days and your all-time history to demonstrate the p … | Continue reading
As promised, Hulu has entered the world of VR. The streaming service today announced the launch of an app designed for Samsung’s Gear VR powered by Oculus. Now available on the Gear VR Oculus Store, the new app is the first of what the company says will be several VR apps for dif … | Continue reading
Five years ago, Craig D. Adams was riding a Toronto streetcar home after a long day at work, when he looked up from his phone and was confused about where he was. That evening, Adams — an artist and game designer better known under the pseudonym Superbrothers — had just released … | Continue reading
There's massive potential in Clash Royale [Free] as a competitive game, and Supercell is taking their first steps towards that being a reality. The studio is hosting an official Clash Royale tournament on April 16th in Helsinki, Finland. If you're in the area, then you'll want to … | Continue reading
If Timehop and Facebook taught us anything, it’s that people sure do love walking down those memory lanes. A year ago, Facebook launched On This Day, a daily reminder of your activities on the social network that happened on that same date. For its first anniversary, Facebook ann … | Continue reading
If you've been hyperventilating over dystopian "cabins of the future" which have gone viral over the past year, it’s time to break out the champagne and toast social media’s power to move mountains. (Or at least make icebergs jiggle a bit.)Airbus revealed its new will-actually-ha … | Continue reading
Dcoin, a distributed network cryptocurrency, has passed a few milestones in its bid to become a widely-used currency that could someday replace national currencies. The project, after nearly five years of planning, has received external funding, has published its app on Play Stor … | Continue reading
Facebook continues to flesh out its analytics on video for Pages and brands, today announcing via blog post a new daily breakdown of numbers to keep its content creators informed. “This new data gives Page owners a better understanding of when their audiences are watching their v … | Continue reading
Ethereum investor Vitalik Buterin gave a presentation at the headquarters of San Francisco bitcoin startup Coinbase this week. | Continue reading
This week Nilay and Dieter welcome transportation reporter Jordan Golson on Vergecast to discuss happenings at the New York Auto Show as well as news out of the Apple event this week. Racked style editor Nicola Fumo again joins us to helm the hype matrix.We'll be live at our usua … | Continue reading
Procrastinators all know that if you have a month to finish something, you’ll figure out a way to ensure the task takes all of that time — and I think publisher Capcom is one of them. The company announced today that it will finally release the Street Fighter V “March update” on … | Continue reading