This week’s Technotopia features Haseeb Awan, founder of a YC bitcoins startup who is creating a new way to reduce currency volatility. Haseeb is pretty bearish on the current financial markets but he sees the growth of Asia and India as a true powerhouse that will be able to use … | Continue reading
In the wake of Prince’s untimely death, more and more stories have been revealed about his secret life of good works: anonymous checks, civil rights activism, charity concerts, etc. But I’d like to talk about something else — the NPG Music Club, an online subscription music club … | Continue reading
Gene editing is going to fundamentally change our lives and how we traditionally think about health throughout the first half of the 21st century. The question isn’t “When will gene editing become a significant reality for the majority of the world?” The truth is, this is neither … | Continue reading
It’s no secret that San Francisco tech loves ping pong. Table tennis has become a must-have for programmers stepping away from their computers to blow off steam. Indeed, it’s most startups first luxury purchase. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, a dip in t … | Continue reading
As a late Friday coda to this week’s news of Nokia’s old feature phone business getting sold on once again, today Nokia quietly confirmed that it is laying off 1,032 employees in its home market of Finland. The cuts will come across all business units. On top of putting the news … | Continue reading
Senator Elizabeth Warren has some choice words for Uber, TaskRabbit, Alfred, and all the other companies taking part in the “so-called gig economy,” as she put it in a speech Thursday for the New America Foundation’s annual conference. She isn’t against them by any means, but urg … | Continue reading
We’re hearing from multiple sources that there’s a new fund coming out of Betaworks, and Twitter is chipping money into it. Twitter is investing at least $10 million in the new fund, according to one source. We don’t know the total size of the venture. In the past, Betaworks has … | Continue reading
There is no shortage of advice when it comes to which tools software companies should use to run their businesses. We’ve all come across numerous “Top 100 resources for startups”-type posts at least once as we Google our way to entrepreneurial success. But after reading just one … | Continue reading
Ad targeting startup Metadata is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Gil Allouche said the company’s technology offers an effective way for businesses that sell to other businesses to find and target new potential customers through adverti … | Continue reading
Ajay Agarwal leads the West Coast team for Bain Capital Ventures, which he joined 13 years ago, meaning he has seen some market zigs and zags. We caught up with him earlier this week over coffee to get his thoughts on what’s happening out there right now. Our chat has been edited … | Continue reading
Gillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. LIVE recording session today, May 20 2016, starting at 1pmPT/4pmET. Our live chat stream during the show broadcast Gillmor Gang's Facebook page HERE G3's archive on ustream G3's Facebook page H … | Continue reading
Motorola’s RAZR surely stands as one of the most recognizable phones of yesteryear (although myself I preferred the Samsung Trace) — and while the brand has been desultorily maintained by Verizon, a new video from Lenovo suggests a more serious throwback device is nearly at hand, … | Continue reading
In the wake of the passing of Title III of the JOBS Act, crowdfunding equity platform FlashFunders has relaunched its site with new features. The new features allow users to crowdfund investment under Form C, which allows for up to $1 million in a single Series from anyone, not j … | Continue reading
Paul Bragiel, the venture capitalist who made an unsuccessful run at qualifying for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics as lone member of the Colombian cross-country ski team, is forming a new, San Francisco-based venture firm with his brother, Dan. According to an SEC filing, they ar … | Continue reading
It’s Friday, so you can probably spare a few minutes to watch a heartwarming little 360-degree animated film, the latest in Google’s “Spotlight Stories.” This one, entitled “Pearl,” takes place entirely inside a beat-up ’80s sedan, and traces the story of a girl and a guitar. Rea … | Continue reading
It’s been a little while since we’ve heard much about Project Ara, but Google wasn’t going to let an I/O go by without shedding a little more light on the much discussed (and formerly Moto-centric) modular smartphone platform. After highlighting the latest updates from Projects S … | Continue reading
Every year at I/O, Google’s ATAP division, which is responsible for turning some of the company’s crazier ideas into products, organizes its own small keynote. This year, the company offered updates on a number of projects, including Project Soli, the company’s attempt at buildin … | Continue reading
At Google’s I/O conference today, Google’s Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) research unit offered an update on its interactive textiles project announced last year, Project Jacquard. ATAP’s Ivan Poupyrev announced that the company was collaborating with iconic clo … | Continue reading
This week, announcements from Google’s annual I/O developer conference dominated tech headlines. But Oracle and Google are back in court, Apple unveiled a new redesigned store in SF and we learned that Amazon may start selling its own groceries soon. These are the stories you don … | Continue reading
For me, fitness trackers are all about motivation. I used to go for a run every single day, and then quit, and then went to yoga every single day, and then I did nothing every single day. Now, a little older and a little more sore, I find myself worried less about working out all … | Continue reading
One of the biggest challenges of a hardware crowdfunding campaign is delivering in a timely fashion. Indiegogo knows that better than most, and is teaming up with Arrow Electronics to help entrepreneurs deliver products. The move is continuing the crowdfunding platform’s hard pus … | Continue reading
Microsoft is further opening up Skype to businesses. On Thursday, the company launched its Skype for Business SDK – tools which allow iOS and Android developers to integrate Skype’s messaging, audio and voice capabilities into their own mobile applications. The idea is to allow S … | Continue reading
The NTIA has published best practice privacy guidelines for the use of commercial and non-commercial drones to gather personally identifiable data. The guidance was agreed by all the various stakeholders involved, including drone companies, consumer privacy groups and news organi … | Continue reading
Purism, proud makers of one of the first truly open laptops, is moving into the world of pro-level tablets. Their latest product, the Librem 11, is a tablet that runs any GNU/Linux version (they recommend the ultra-secure Qubes) and can double as a laptop. The company made waves … | Continue reading
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about “The New Normal” for VC-backed technology companies. It’s not just in the popular press headlines. Nearly every conversation I have with co-investors, founders and LPs these days involves some discussion of current “new normal” market conditio … | Continue reading
Microsoft is bringing Minecraft, the insanely popular game it acquired when it bought Mojang for $2.5 billion, to China. Read More | Continue reading
Let’s face it. Some tech conferences have lost their way. While TechCrunch Disrupt remains a firmly curated, media-driven, event, with hundreds of journalists attending, a couple of other conferences have really gone for scale. A minimum of 15,000 people, thousands of companies, … | Continue reading
IMAX, one company that has pushed cinema technology forward, is preparing to toss its hat into the virtual reality ring with a set of new initiatives. Read More | Continue reading
Jungle Ventures, the Singapore-based VC firm that launched a $100 million fund last year, has recruited three new operating partners to its team. Michael Smith comes from streaming service HOOQ, where he was chief product officer, joining recent hires Gabriel Lundberg, ex-Spotify … | Continue reading
Samsung announced today that it has cemented a deal that will make Alipay, China’s largest online payments platform, available through Samsung Pay. Read More | Continue reading
Interior design and decorating resource Houzz is the overall best Android app of the year, according to Google, which this evening announced the results of the first-ever Google Play Awards at its developer conference, Google I/O. While in previous years, the company had rounded … | Continue reading
In today’s tech-driven business world, the title “serial entrepreneur” is a coveted badge of honor. It’s easy to understand the appeal of the phrase. It suggests that someone is so full of groundbreaking ideas they can’t channel all of them into just one company. Instead, they ch … | Continue reading
After Google’s decision not to provide end-to-end encryption by default in its new chat app, Allo, raised questions about the balance of security and effective artificial intelligence, one of the company’s top security engineers said he’d push for end-to-end encryption to become … | Continue reading
Mobile ad company UberMedia is expanding its measurement and attribution business in a big way. You may remember UberMedia as the company that owns social apps like Echofon and UberSocial. While that’s still the case, it has shifted its attention over the past few years to its mo … | Continue reading
Decentralized chat app FireChat is adding a new feature that could help disseminate critical info like storm warnings, health advisories, and so on, when the normal communications grid is down. Truth be told, Alerts aren’t terribly different from the normal chat function, which p … | Continue reading
For all their being motion-enabling platforms, wheelchairs are themselves rather static. A frame of steel and aluminum supporting foam-filled leather or plastic, with a handful of settings that may or may not accommodate the user’s specific condition. A London design firm has wor … | Continue reading
Bummer, dude! That’s what you say when you find out that your whole keg of Heiney is totally skunked but it doesn’t matter because you’ll totally still drink it after you finish the pony keg of Sammo’s Irish Red. But what if I told you that folks in Spain have figured out a way t … | Continue reading
Drop the price $20 and add a bit more functionality and you’ve got a compelling product on your hands. The way things stand now though, the Withings Go is more of a curiosity than it is compelling — or, for that matter, tempting. Read More | Continue reading
A wide-scale study of online trackers carried out by researchers at Princeton University has identified a new technique being used to try to strip web users of their privacy, as well as quantifying the ongoing usage of some better known tracking techniques. Read More | Continue reading
Reddit posts are going to get the chance to live beyond Reddit itself, thanks to new embedding capabilities.If you’re an online writer or publisher, that means you can start including live Reddit content in your stories. If you’re a reader, that means you might start to see more … | Continue reading
Oakland, Calif.-based Edyn started selling a new, smart gardening device this week, an internet-connected water valve that lets users irrigate their food, flowers or lawns automatically.The Edyn Water Valve uses data from the company’s Edyn Garden Sensor, a soil sensor, along wi … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. This is a condensed version of several Wirecutter guides; you can find links to the full guides in the discussions below. Quick survey: How much time have you spent setting u … | Continue reading
As someone who has worked in technology his entire adult life, I can say the following with complete conviction: Somewhere at this moment a young entrepreneur is developing a product, service or business model that will transform the way our world thinks, works, plays, communicat … | Continue reading
‘Has he threatened you with a gun?’ Is one of the questions a woman will be asked when she’s downloaded the domestic abuse counseling app My Plan. “This scenario is more common on college campuses than we’d like to believe,” said the app’s co-founder, Nancy Glass. Glass, who is a … | Continue reading
San Francisco-based Tally Technologies Inc. raised $15 million in Series A venture funding, to launch an app that promises to help people maintain good credit while avoiding fees, charges and other credit card affiliated pains. Shasta Ventures led the Series A investment in Tally … | Continue reading
TechCrunch is please to bring you Alchemist Accelerator‘s demo day live from PARC, a Xerox Company. Alchemist is one of those rare programs that focuses on enterprise startups. These aren’t your parents enterprise companies. Pitches today will span products that help businesses l … | Continue reading
This week I ended up with an advance copy of Influence Central’s new report called Kids & Tech: The Evolution of Today’s Digital Natives. The report—which is a subsection from a larger, ongoing study of 500 women across the USA—details findings on the way that kids are using tech … | Continue reading
Google has been slowly building virtual reality-focused functionality into the YouTube app over the past year with support for 360-degree video formats, stereoscopic video, 3D audio and general Google Cardboard support. Today, YouTube, the “world’s largest collection of VR videos … | Continue reading