Cyan Banister realized long ago that Zivity, a subscription-based online community of artistic nude, glamour, and pin-up photography that she founded in 2007, was never going to be a highly profitable endeavor. That’s okay with her, too. In an interview last week, Banister – know … | Continue reading
When you’re the leader of the free world who has been keeping an eagle eye on liberty and domestic surveillance for the past 7-8 years, sometimes you just want to take a look at a new version of reality.Obama tried virtual reality this weekend with his occasional frenemy Angela M … | Continue reading
Rackspace today announced that it is partnering with AppFormix to bring that company’s cloud monitoring and performance optimization tools to its private OpenStack cloud customers.Thanks to this partnership, Rackspace will now license AppFormix’s tools and bring it to all of its … | Continue reading
Shyp is now charging a $5 handling fee for its online returns, in addition to its regular pickup fee and postage costs. Shyp’s big play has been that it’ll charge a simple $5 fee, plus postage, for a quick pickup and delivery. It expanded into online returns in March last year af … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that Yik Yak would soon be introducing a new feature designed to help the floundering app boost its user retention numbers: private chat. Today, the company confirmed the feature is now going live, along with the introduction of a new “Safe … | Continue reading
Drone races are nothing new. But while they started as an ad-hoc activity within the drone community, the sport has now taken on a life of its own with highly elaborate events and a partnership with ESPN.Similarly, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology isn’t totally new. And … | Continue reading
A list containing hundreds of Spotify account credentials – including emails, usernames, passwords, account type and other details – has popped up on the website Pastebin, in what appears to be a possible security breach. After reaching out to a random sampling of the victims via … | Continue reading
The road to practical virtual reality applications as been exhausting and there are few people who have traveled as far as Shanna Tellerman. We’re excited to announce that she will join a panel of virtual reality experts at Disrupt NY.Her latest ventures blends 3D applications wi … | Continue reading
I’ve been working in the privacy space for the last six years, and privacy never really mattered that much to me. I can’t say I was ever in the “if-you’re-not-doing-anything-wrong, you’ve-got-nothing-to-hide” camp, but I also wasn’t arms-up-in-the-air outraged that some corporati … | Continue reading
One of the world’s largest children’s mobile app makers, Toca Boca, whose studios have produced apps totalling over 140 million downloads, has been acquired. The company had originally operated like a startup within the 200-year old Swedish publishing firm Bonnier, but has now be … | Continue reading
Companies like Makespace and Clutter have fully encroached upon the old-school industry of storage, but the even more ancient moving industry has been left relatively untouched. Until now. A company called Crater, founded by former Moveline employees, has created a tool called Su … | Continue reading
It’s happening! Include Office Hours are coming to New York City. On Friday May 6 from 5-7 p.m., Susan Lyne and Nisha Dua of BBG Ventures will join TechCrunch in hosting the first ever Include Office Hours, New York Edition. Read More | Continue reading
It’s no secret that it’s still hard to find good tech talent and that’s definitely the case for the kind complex and highly specialized skillset it takes to administer an OpenStack cloud. To grow this talent pool and to allow admins to show off their OpenStack skills, the OpenSta … | Continue reading
Microsoft has released a next-word predicting keyboard as an iOS app as it seeks to tap into the popularity of the latter’s mobile ecosystem in the hopes of expanding its influence in the mobile productivity space. Read More | Continue reading
Money and teaching might seem at odds with one another but a study out from the Yelp for fertility treatments startup FertilityIQ found both to be the best indicators of success with IVF. FertilityIQ is one of many pregnancy-focused tech companies busy gathering new information f … | Continue reading
Google Glass has turned away from marketing itself to consumers, but its enterprise business continues to pick up pace, and today one of the more promising companies developing medical services using Google’s connected eyewear is announcing a significant investment in its technol … | Continue reading
Today is a big day for Y Combinator graduate Kamcord, after the San Francisco startup announced a $10 million Series C round led by Time Warner, and a move that expands its mobile streaming focus from mobile games to any app. Read More | Continue reading
China’s tech scene is losing one of its most recognizable and influential faces after Baidu head of comms and all-round nice guy Kaiser Kuo announced he is leaving the company to return to the U.S.. Read More | Continue reading
Times are getting tougher for food delivery startups in India. Over the weekend, PepperTap—which has raised more than $50 million from backers including Sequoia Capital and SAIF Partners—announced that it will shut its grocery delivery business and switch to e-commerce logistics. … | Continue reading
Unlockd, an ad startup that helps you get discounts on your phone bill, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. We’ve written about other startups that show advertising on your smartphone lockscreen, but the Unlockd model is different in a couple of key ways. First of all, as … | Continue reading
Zalora, the fashion-focused e-commerce site backed by Rocket Internet, is selling its businesses in Thailand and Vietnam to retail giant Central Group, according to multiple sources close to the deal. Read More | Continue reading
Bitcasa is pulling out of consumer cloud storage to focus on its platform business, giving users a month’s notice to move their data elsewhere — and providing the perennial reminder that if you don’t own the infrastructure your data is at the mercy of the entity that does.Users o … | Continue reading
The end of on-demand is nigh. The media cover down rounds and startups winding down on a weekly basis, and, as funding stops, it seems as if every “Uber for X” is doomed to fail. However, all on-demand models are not created equally, and their potential for margin disruption shou … | Continue reading
NASA has announced the launch of the “New Aviation Horizons” initiative, which will lead to a new generation of X-planes that are fueled by greener energy, use half the fuel, and are half as loud as commercial aircraft in use today. “NASA’s flight research program is on its way t … | Continue reading
A new high-end smartphone manufacturer Sirin Labs has raised a $72 million seed round from Singulariteam founder Moshe Hogeg, Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, and the Chinese social networking service Renren to launch a secure smartphone to the consumer market. Read More | Continue reading
As the Tribeca Film Festival winds down in New York City, we’re highlighting one of the most tech-driven parts of the event — Storyscapes, which showcased 10 works of virtual reality and interactive storytelling. At Storyscapes, I talked to the creators of Notes on Blindness (whi … | Continue reading
As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful new currency is emerging — and it’s based on trust. What’s striking about the shared economy is not the technology that has … | Continue reading
When Facebook opened its API, the platform spawned a completely new way of distributing apps on the web. Developers now had unprecedented access and deep integration into many of Facebook’s core features, allowing anyone to sign up and start building. Read More | Continue reading
1776, Washington DC’s leading incubator of technology start-ups, describes itself as “where revolutions begin”… But that revolution will only begin in partnership with government, according to Brandon Pollack, the incubator’s director of global affairs. Read More | Continue reading
They say once you’ve had frostbite, you never forget the cold. A founder who has suffered a bad board, or board member, never forgets that, either. I took my company public at age 33 with a board of four: me, someone I trusted and two people who taught me the meaning of the word … | Continue reading
As digital wallets increasingly become the origination point for consumer spending, they will become THE platform for downstream financial services — creating an opportunity for startups and a problem for established players. Read More | Continue reading
It’s too easy to slip into melancholy and gloom. Corporations want to ultimately fire you, whether you like your job or not. Their entire purpose is to create and squeeze the efficiencies out of you until you drop dead or are no longer needed. Know when to jump. Read More | Continue reading
Real estate investing has long elicited a variety of emotions, running the gamut from excitement to anxiety. When dealing with significant sums of capital, feelings of apprehension tend to creep in, especially regarding neighborhood quality, tenant and property management issues … | Continue reading
Last year was a big year for unicorns. According to Venture Beat, there are now 229 unicorn startups, with $175 billion in funding and $1.3 trillion in valuation. In 2015 alone there were 81 new entrants crowned as the legendary beast. However, the glory did not last. We are star … | Continue reading
Already there has been a huge amount invested in fintech in 2016, with investors funding close to $9 billion in January and February alone. It is a sector of innovation that shows no signs of slowing down. If 2015 was the year of the great “Bank Unbundling,” it was also a year th … | Continue reading
The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Thursday, April 21, 2016. The sudden death of the Artist Forever Known as Prince reverberates across generations, decades, and the melting pot of pop, soul, funk, and rock and … | Continue reading
I know that sounds like porn, but in reality OMGYES is actually an education platform. The startup is tackling a subject that’s still shockingly taboo with concrete research and user-friendly content to teach women (and their partners) how to get to climax. The startup got its st … | Continue reading
The discussion around robots has only increased in the past few years. But beyond the physical capabilities of robots, the bigger question is what robots’ minds will be capable of in the future. How will we communicate with a robot’s mind? Will it only act in the physical world o … | Continue reading
In the world of professional eSports these days, money doesn’t rain — it pours. The stakes are high and the competition can be cut-throat, especially given the payday waiting at the end of a match. But the flood of money has brought an unexpected innovation in the way players are … | Continue reading
Did you know that the US government is sitting on its own Strategic Zero-Day Reserve? A “zero-day” is a software vulnerability that allows adversaries to bypass or reduce security restrictions; lets them hack systems which use that software, basically. These are not restricted to … | Continue reading
Cancel your plans for this weekend! CERN just dropped 300 terabytes of hot collider data on the world and you know you want to take a look. Read More | Continue reading
Don’t argue, just do it. Read More | Continue reading
NASA has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne for a $67 million contract to develop an advanced Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system for future deep-space missions. In a press release, NASA stated that the propulsion system could be used on robotic missions to an asteroid and in other m … | Continue reading
Computers and mobile devices running rich operating systems have a plethora of security solutions and encryption protocols from which to choose that can protect them against the multitude of threats they face as soon as they become connected to the Internet. Such is not the case … | Continue reading
It has been a dry year for tech IPOs. Up until today’s SecureWorks offering, there had been zero in the U.S. in 2016. Zero.So tech investors and late stage private companies were watching SecureWorks closely, to see if the tech IPO window would reopen. It is one of the few indica … | Continue reading
Swarms of drones flying in terrifyingly perfect formation could be one step closer, thanks to a control algorithm being developed at MIT. Read More | Continue reading
Few — though not most — see what’s coming next, too, and that’s women VCs, taking their place alongside men, in equal, or nearly equal, numbers. In fact, we’d argue that the shift will represent the biggest opportunity over the next decade. It may be hard to believe, given the we … | Continue reading
What if energy ‘agents’ could help us make better choices to cut costs and save the planet? Read More | Continue reading