The first edition of essays to examine ways Mark Zuckerberg has been depicted in mass media is now available. Released online today, the California Review of Images and Mark Zuckerberg contains a collection of writing dedicated to analysis of depictions of Facebook’s CEO either b … | Continue reading
Google today launched the second and final Android 8.1 Oreo developer preview (the first preview arrived in October). The Developer Preview is available for Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and the Android emulator. You can get the preview update … | Continue reading
A handful of gaming industry experts have announced the formation of the National Committee for Games Policy to influence government regulation of the industry. This is a direct response to what the NCGP calls the loot box gambling crisis. The group says it will have a thinktank … | Continue reading
Starting on November 28, Bungie will offer a free trial version of Destiny 2, its online multiplayer shooter for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Destiny 2 launched on September 6 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The PC version followed on October 24. It didn’t take long for it to … | Continue reading
Woo — a marketplace that matches employers and passive job seekers — has today announced it has landed $7 million in series A funding. Along with that new round, it has also launched a new AI-powered bot, Helena, that has a few impressive tricks up its digital sleeve. Helena auto … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by Mapbox Signups just opened for Locate, a brand new mapping and location tech conference launched by a group of us at Mapbox. Product leaders, developers, designers — people solving real problems and building cool stuff are coming together to show off proje … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Spreadshirt, the self-expression global e-commerce company, has added 45 brand new Brother GTX digital direct printing machines just in time to meet production demands during the busy holiday season. This state of the art technology... | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Computer vision has evolved quickly in the past few years. From Word Lens to Google Goggles, the ability to recognize text and objects speedily on any device is a far cry from the days of scanning documents and time-consuming OCR. Document and content capture company A … | Continue reading
Network security company Barracuda Networks (Barracuda) is set to become a private company again a little more than four years after going public. Private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo is offering shareholders $27.55 per share in an all-cash deal worth around $1.6 billion. F … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Cavirin Systems, Inc., offers continuous security assessment and remediation for hybrid environments, containers, and data centers, via the most comprehensive curated library of industry guidelines, control frameworks, and best practices.... | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Royal Dutch Shell has partnered with top carmakers to deploy ultra-fast chargers on Europe’s highways, stealing a march on rivals in the race to remove one of the biggest obstacles facing the electric car sector. Shell’s agreement with IONITY – a joint venture between … | Continue reading
While the debate about whether virtual reality is just some oversold hype rages on, the nascent industry can at least boast of having crossed an important milestone. According to a report from Canalys today, one million virtual reality headsets shipped in the three months ending … | Continue reading
Amazon is jumping onto the augmented and virtual reality bandwagon with the launch of Sumerian, a new application that’s supposed to help make it easier for people to develop 3D experiences for a wide variety of platforms. It’s a browser-based tool that’s available in limited pre … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services is making its cloud more appealing for companies that need to serve large amounts of video over the web. The company announced a set of AWS Media Services today that are designed to make it easier for businesses to encode and serve video across the internet, u … | Continue reading
GUEST: In a world with limited doctors, emerging diseases and superbugs, and sharply rising healthcare costs, how can we successfully tackle healthcare problems at scale? This is just one of the critical challenges India’s explosive startup community hopes to solve by implementin … | Continue reading
Nvidia and Nuance announced a partnership today that’s aimed at helping healthcare institutions tap into artificial intelligence. The Nuance AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging is, as the name suggests, designed to provide a hub for medical professionals to pick up new tools fo … | Continue reading
While Europe’s startup ecosystem has changed dramatically over the past decade, venture capitalists are warning that entrepreneurs must do more to encourage and reward risk if they want to create the next generation of tech giants. “One of the things holding [these entrepreneurs] … | Continue reading
Balderton Capital announced today it has closed its sixth fund, which the London-based firm said it will use to expand its commitment to backing young European companies. “It reflects the increasing opportunity we see in Europe,” said Bernard Liautaud, managing partner of Baldert … | Continue reading
Some of the brightest minds leading the Midwest blockchain movement gathered in Lincoln last week to make the case for the Midwest as a leader in the technology and to announce Block-a-thon coming April 2018. “We’re all about planting seeds and joining forces with people that hav … | Continue reading
It’s easy to think that Star Wars: Battlefront II is the sole result of Electronic Arts‘ work. That publisher taken the lead on developing and promoting the sci-fi shooter, which is available now on PC and consoles. But Lucasfilm is involved with everything. “Yeah, that’s very mu … | Continue reading
When Bait! from Resolution Games first launched on Gear VR it introduced several visually pleasing vistas at which players could cast their line for some recreational fishing. With a mixture of free-to-play design and some light microtransactions, it quickly soared on the platfor … | Continue reading
GUEST: It’s tempting to think AI adoption is limited by the technology itself. Headlines declaring the rise of robot doctors and approaching Singularity, contrasted with humorous memes of robots falling over, make us fear and sometimes doubt its capabilities. In practice, however … | Continue reading
The VOID just announced a third location for its top-of-the-line Star Wars VR installation. London now joins Orlando and Anaheim offering Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire. The London location in the Shepherd’s Bush neighborhood at the Westfield shopping center opens starting Dece … | Continue reading
A religion based around artificial intelligence is in the news again, this time helmed by Anthony Levandowski, a former member of Google’s self-driving car team. His argument is that humans will eventually create AI that is more intelligent than we are, making it functionally god … | Continue reading
GUEST: Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have raised a tremendous amount of capital in 2017. Filecoin raised $257 million. Tezos raised $232 million. Bancor raised $153 million. Status raised $108 million. And EOS raised $185 million in the first five days of a year-long ICO. These n … | Continue reading
GUEST: Imagine it’s December 2018 — one year after a spectacular corporate meltdown at Uber. The dust has settled, and we’re beginning to see the far-reaching consequences of the company’s collapse. Here’s how I see that possible future scenario: 1. The fire sale has turned into … | Continue reading
A group of Rhode Island entrepreneurs have formed a new group to boost the local startup ecosystem. The new organization, called the Rhode Island Coalition of Entrepreneurs, launched its website this week and is now open to any founder or CEO of a high-growth startup in the state … | Continue reading
Star Wars: Battlefront II is one of the biggest expansions of the Star Wars universe since Disney purchased the rights to the franchise from George Lucas — and it is all happening outside of Lucasfilm at publisher Electronic Arts. But while EA has the rights to make Star Wars gam … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Mobile game developers are embracing in-game advertisements as an important way to monetize games, according to a study by analytics firm DeltaDNA. The company, based in Scotland and San Francisco, said in its 2017 DeltaDNA Ad Survey that developers have shifted their … | Continue reading
Microsoft likes to think of its HoloLens mixed reality headset as projecting holograms into the real world, but these can only be seen by the person wearing the headset. Looking Glass Factory’s Holoplayer One is making holograms that everyone can see and interact with. Holoplayer … | Continue reading
In September 2015, the Ukrainian startup community and technology-focused media went into a frenzy after Snapchat announced it was acquiring Looksery, an Odessa-based image-processing startup. The deal, reportedly valued at around $150 million, represented one of the most spectac … | Continue reading
Seattle-based Against Gravity is working on what is perhaps VR’s most important app. Rec Room connects players across all headsets that make use of two full motion hand controllers, including Rift, Vive, PlayStation VR as well as headsets from Acer, Samsung, Lenovo, HP and Dell. … | Continue reading
GUEST: The way we create and consume visual content has changed significantly with the advent of both digital and mobile cameras. Today, algorithms bring on the next wave of innovation and evolution in the space. AI technologies are increasingly good at classifying, organizing an … | Continue reading
Niantic, Inc. announced today that it has raised a fresh round of capital — $200 million to be exact, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Series B round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, Meritech, Javelin Venture Capital, and NeatEase. … | Continue reading
GUEST: Three critical trends are driving forward the rapid development of a new generation of financial robo-advice models. In fact, gains in these three areas create the potential for a Moore’s Law pattern of acceleration in the field of artificial intelligence-powered financial … | Continue reading
Tabletop games have become more popular and sophisticated over the years, and one of the people responsible for that is Larry Harris, the creator of Axis & Allies. The casual simulation of World War II has sold millions of copies over the years, and it is just one of 200 tabletop … | Continue reading
You may not have heard of Yiying Lu, but chances are you’ve seen her work for some of tech’s most popular companies. She’s the artist behind one of the most iconic images from the beginning of Web 2.0, the Fail Whale, which Twitter adopted to replace the stale 404 page when the s … | Continue reading
Some people are freaking out about net neutrality right now. Me, I’m deciding where to put my holiday play time. Will it be Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Star Wars: Battlefront II, or Call of Duty: WWII? The best answer, of course, is to play all three of the recently launche … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: In the month since 238 cities submitted a bid for Amazon’s HQ2, few details have emerged as to what various cities and states have tried to entice Amazon with (except for a 21-foot saguro cactus, of course). MuckRock, a journalism nonprofit, is trying to track down all … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Artificial intelligence has been transformative in 2017. On VentureBeat podcast VB Engage, we’ve been talking every week about AI’s role in changing the face of marketing. Missbeez, the sharing economy app for beauty therapists, today announced that it is now using AI … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: Somewhat improbably, it is Black Friday here in France. Not “Le Vendredi Noir,” or “Les Soldes du Vendredi Noir” or “Le Jour Où Les Gens Raisonnables Perdent La Tête Et Rampent Les Uns Sur Les Autres Pour Acheter De La Merde Bon Marché.” Just Black Friday in plain old E … | Continue reading
Some people don’t think that the holidays are as fun for as adults as they are for kids. Hogwash! People born in the ’80s can have as merry a time as anyone, especially with some help from nostalgic gifts. If you have some gamers with a love of the ’80s on your shopping list, we’ … | Continue reading
Popular virtual private network (VPN) provider TunnelBear is extending its paws into a new privacy-focused product with the launch of a cross-platform password management app. Available now in beta, RememBear (get it?) is currently available on Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS, as … | Continue reading
Uber’s merger with ride-sharing company Yandex in Eastern Europe is one step closer to completion after getting the green light from Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). The Belarus Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation has also approved the deal, leaving Kazakhstan’s regul … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Uber said on Thursday that it discussed a massive data breach with potential investor SoftBank Group ahead of going public with details of the incident on Tuesday. The ride-hailing service is trying to complete a deal in which the Japanese company would invest as much … | Continue reading
This week, Travis and Stewart interview BuzzSumo’s awesome Steve Rayson, who has analyzed over 100 million headlines to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what converts. In the news, we discuss a new solution for creating Alexa skills and the questions businesses must answer bef … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — European Union privacy regulators will discuss ride-hailing app Uber’s massive data breach cover-up next week and could create a task-force to coordinate investigations. Uber faces regulatory scrutiny after CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company covered up a data brea … | Continue reading
The holidays are good chance to catch up on the torrent of fantastic games this year. Sony’s PlayStation 4 saw a number of terrific exclusives this year, as well some acclaimed games that just work better with a controller. Here are a few that you might want to pick up for your f … | Continue reading