Europe’s DocPlanner, an online booking platform for healthcare appointments, has raised a $20 million Series C round, and at the same time is announcing a merger with Spain’s Doctoralia. The new funding, which was led by Target Global, will be used for further international expan … | Continue reading
Analyst Gartner is expecting a big drop in smartphone sales growth, projecting the market will shrink from 14.4 per cent growth in 2015 to just 7 per cent in 2016 — with only 1.5 billion smartphone units being shipped globally this year. The high watermark for smartphone sales wa … | Continue reading
Hiri is the latest startup trying to fix email. Specifically, the Dublin-based company is targeting workplace email with an array of features that aim to nudge users to change their email behaviour for the better. For it isn’t email that is necessarily broken but the way we all u … | Continue reading
Verizon may be moving closer towards purchasing Yahoo’s main Internet assets. According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, the telecommunications giant wants to make a $3 billion second-round bid for Yahoo. Read More | Continue reading
I came across Instabug when I was in Cairo in 2013. Little did I know that this plucky startup, born in the Arab Spring, would eventually make it through Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 class. Now they have gone on to raise $1.7M in a Seed round led by Accel Partners to expand beyond … | Continue reading
Microsoft Unveils Microsoft Planner a Trello competitor, T-mobile is giving away a share of the company to all it’s customers, you could potentially even get up to 100 shares, Facebook is disabling messaging in it’s mobile web app, Mark Zuckerberg’s Linkedin Twitter and Pinterest … | Continue reading
The latest Instagram update makes it easier to post from other iOS apps. Instagram has enabled share extensions, which means users can now send pictures directly to their feeds from apps like Photos. Read More | Continue reading
Ultimately, the checklist for first time founders going out to raise money never ends. However, the common thread throughout is the importance of being strategic. Read More | Continue reading
For those who follow technological innovation, it can often seem like certain areas of investor enthusiasm come out of nowhere — suddenly and with huge momentum. The wave analogy is often used, and not incorrectly — fevered investment propels increasing interest and drives new op … | Continue reading
Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, has partnered with NASA to fly and test technology payloads on suborbital flights with the New Shepard launch vehicle. Bezos’ company is the sixth partner that NASA has selected through the Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle … | Continue reading
Cover up your webcam, disable microphone access and put on your tinfoil hat — but it won’t make any difference, because the Illuminati can get at you through your phone’s vibration motor now. Well, kind of, anyway. Your best defense? Talk in a high voice. Read More | Continue reading
As two Senators battled in the 2008 Democratic primaries, several Silicon Valley CEOs and investors poured early financing into one particular candidate — Hillary Clinton. Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter, Uber, and Instagram also bet early on Clinton, contributing to he … | Continue reading
I can’t help but think about shock collars when I wrap the bright orange silicone around my wrist. They’ve always seemed fairly cruel. And yet, here I go, putting one on myself — not for barking or wandering out of the yard, but for the crime of having a hard time getting my butt … | Continue reading
Hibob — yes we’re running that low on company names — is a new U.K. startup building out a cloud platform that helps businesses manage their people. Read More | Continue reading
Watch out, global supercomputer Top 5, there’s a new contender. Or at least there will be soon, once the $30 million Stampede 2 is up and running. With 18 petaflops peak processing capacity, the new system will stand shoulder to shoulder with Cray’s Titan and IBM’s Sequoia — thou … | Continue reading
Figure1, which started out as a photo-sharing app for medical professionals, has quietly added direct messaging to its platform, showing signs the startup wants to be more of a Facebook and less of an Instagram in its field. Toronto and New York-based Figure1 only allows full acc … | Continue reading
T-Mobile had another of its un-carrier events today, which now have so many regular giveaways they are starting to look like an episode of Oprah. First, the company announced that every current T-Mobile account holder on a postpaid plan will get one share of common stock in the c … | Continue reading
“Sometimes I think back on that moment and think I must have been utterly insane,” Kegan Schouwenburg says with a laugh. “In retrospect, we were bringing out a new product with a new method in the medical sector, and we were going to work with doctors and sell a product through a … | Continue reading
While DOZ has been around for a while, the company is adding a nifty brick to its product offering with an automated tool to get a quote and launch a marketing campaign. Compared to good old marketing agencies, DOZ speeds up the hiring process quite a bit. If you aren’t familiar … | Continue reading
The debut post on Uber’s new driver-focused “Behind the Wheel” blog brings with it several features those very drivers may find useful — especially when clocking out. Read More | Continue reading
The Microsoft Office lineup is getting a new addition today: Microsoft Planner, team collaboration software that lets you visually organize plans, assign tasks, share files, chat and more. The new app, first introduced into testing last fall, enters a competitive space which incl … | Continue reading
Microsoft today announced that it is making a serious commitment to the open source Apache Spark cluster computing framework. After dipping its toes into the Spark ecosystem last year, the company today launched a number of Spark-based services out of preview and announced that t … | Continue reading
If people spend a lot of time doing something on the Internet, you can bet Facebook wants a piece. Its latest conquest attempt is the video game streaming business ruled by Twitch and YouTube. Today, Facebook announced its working with World Of Warcraft maker Blizzard to build so … | Continue reading
America’s two major political parties are in the process of being unscaled. They’re being pulled apart and disrupted like so many other industries and institutions today. Pundits blame Donald Trump for the turmoil plaguing the Republican party and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats … | Continue reading
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Google to throw out a class action lawsuit from California advertisers. Those advertisers are alleging that by not informing them that ads purchased through the company’s AdWords program might appear on error pages and pa … | Continue reading
Keeping your passwords safe, updated, strong and less vulnerable to hacks is a challenge for everyone – even a few of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s online accounts were hacked over the weekend, for example, likely due to the new dump of LinkedIn account data. That’s where passwo … | Continue reading
As the on-demand transportation industry continues to heat up in China, one of the bigger online marketplaces for cars is also capitalizing on the growth. Bitauto Holdings — which both operates a giant car marketplace that we’ve in the past described as Cars.com, Consumer Reports … | Continue reading
Refinery29, the fast-growing media company focused on women, has today announced its expansion into Germany.Refinery29.de will be the first non-English property owned by Refinery29, and the second-local edition following the launch of Refinery29 in the UK.Refinery29 launched back … | Continue reading
Apple TV has Siri. Fire TV has Alexa. And now the Xbox will have Microsoft’s own virtual assistant, Cortana. The company announced this morning a summer update for its Xbox One that will include support for Cortana along with other improvements aimed at unifying the gaming consol … | Continue reading
It’s that time again: EuroBiggs arrives in Poland and would like to enjoy a Lech with you all. I’ll be in Poland for a week and would love to meet up in Warsaw on the 13th and in Krakow on the 15th. The Krakow meetup is already set. It will be held at Forum Przestrzenie, 28 Marii … | Continue reading
SoftBank is continuing to divest some of its major shareholdings after the Japanese firm announced plans to sell around $685 million in stock from games firm GungHo. Read More | Continue reading
Netflix has been keen to stress its new global focus since it launched into more than 100 new countries in January. That approach is not just about being available worldwide, it includes programming that is localized to international audiences too and, along that trail, Netflix j … | Continue reading
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been targeted by hackers who were yesterday able to briefly gain control of several of his social media accounts, some of which were defaced. Read More | Continue reading
Miso, a home cleaning service in South Korea, wants to sweep up some ambitious growth goals after being accepted into Y Combinator’s summer class. The startup’s founders will join the accelerator program this week. Read More | Continue reading
The people of Switzerland have rejected a proposal to give a universal basic income (UBI) to every citizen, with almost 77 per cent saying ‘no’ vs 23 per cent in favor. Read More | Continue reading
The TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off in Stockholm is literally right around the corner — in fact it’s happening tomorrow on June 7. I’m currently sitting at the airport in Paris, waiting for my flight. I woke up way too early — and yet, I couldn’t be more excited about going to Stoc … | Continue reading
Groupon continues to streamline its business in Asia after it announced the sale of its operations in Indonesia to a somewhat unlikely buyer. KFit, a startup that sells gym and fitness memberships in the same style as ClassPass, is picking up Groupon Indonesia in an undisclosed d … | Continue reading
Our team has been actively investing in fintech for the past two years. In addition to reading pitches from hundreds of companies and meeting with dozens, half of our team has worked in the finance sector in previous careers. SparkLabs Global decided to create an easy to read ove … | Continue reading
Both Trump and Sanders, Jarvis argues, are tied together by their anger and their narcissistic use of traditional political platforms and parties to get individual attention. Read More | Continue reading
Like tea and toddler’s birthday parties, everything is better with bubbles. This interesting new Kickstarter watch has a unique “bubble” or convex track around its face, a feature that will be familiar to folks who like De Bethune and may want something similar… but much, much ch … | Continue reading
American Airlines has gone non-Gogo, striking a deal with Southern Californian communications company ViaSat to bring satellite-powered WiFi to 100 Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts by September of next year. The deal comes in the wake of some fairly tense dealings between the airline and … | Continue reading
I spent last week on a junket in Paris, paid for by the French government, visiting the various hubs and spokes of the burgeoning French startup scene. I don’t think they’ll invite me back, after they read this. My considered assessment is that the French government, and to an ex … | Continue reading
In Return of the Jedi, Yoda tells Luke “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.” Luckily for me, this didn’t apply to the patent world. I spent seven years on the “dark side” working for patent trolls before coming back to th … | Continue reading
The Bose name has more or less been synonymous with the words “noise cancelling.” As for wireless? Not so much. The headphone maker has dragged its feet when it comes to cutting the cord, even as the competition has flooded the market with Bluetooth solutions.The company, thankfu … | Continue reading
Silicon Valley may be the startup center of the universe, but it’s far from alone when it comes to a concentration of good ideas. Innovation and creativity aren’t confined to any one place, and the startup hub idea that has taken root in the Valley can be replicated in others are … | Continue reading
With its major cities congested with traffic — taxi cabs, public transports and, lately, ride-hailing and ride-sharing apps — Egypt apparently still needs more when it comes to transportation. Catering to a population exceeding 90 million, international market players Uber and Ca … | Continue reading
Admittedly, Atari isn’t the entertainment powerhouse it once was. The company has spent the last few years digging attempting to reinvent itself after declaring bankruptcy in 2013, focusing largely on mobile gaming plays and casino deals. Now the one-time gaming juggernaut is len … | Continue reading
According to research unearthed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the FBI has teamed with government scientists to work on a technology system designed to track tattoos.In 2014, the Imaging wing of the the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created the Tat … | Continue reading