Getting a hand-written note in the mail today is a rare treat, as most of our communications have gone digital. Another reason for this? Our penmanship has massively suffered as we spend more time typing, and less writing with pen and paper. I mean, sure, I could send you a note … | Continue reading
Houzz, the home decorating and renovation platform with a unicorn valuation, has launched a site and apps for Singapore, its second Asian market after Japan. Read More | Continue reading
We’ve given you an extension, and now it’s time for you to act. This is the last week to get tickets to Disrupt NY 2016 at the early-bird price of $1,995 per ticket before the it jumps by $1,000 after April 15.If you don’t get your tickets ordered by the end of the day on Friday, … | Continue reading
Ahead of Facebook’s annual developers conference, F8, the company has announced a partnership with Dev Bootcamp to fund scholarships for 20 people of color and/or women to attend the 19-week program for free this year. Facebook’s using a portion of the proceeds from F8 ticket sal … | Continue reading
The little pilot boat bounces and slaps the waves as it sidles next to the towering cargo vessel as the two craft match speed and course, the small boat looking hopelessly fragile next to its eight-story, windowless counterpart—an egg challenging China’s Great Wall. Read More | Continue reading
A new application called Slidebox aims to help Android users clean up their photo library by swiping to delete unwanted photos, as well as use other tools to more easily organize photos into albums. It’s sort of like a “Tinder for Photos” with a few extra features, in fact.The ap … | Continue reading
Document analytics startup DocSend has raised $8 million in new funding. Naturally, co-founder and CEO Russ Heddleston said he used his company’s tools to make the deal. DocSend launched at our Disrupt NY conference two years ago, offering users a different way to send email atta … | Continue reading
Quixey, a well-funded mobile technology company which once focused on solving the problems with app discovery before shifting focus to deep linking, has brought in a new CEO to run operations as the company has missed its revenue targets and lost top execs. According to an announ … | Continue reading
Men hate shopping for clothes, and think it’s a waste of time. Whether it’s true or not, that’s the narrative perpetuated by the countless number of personal shopping and subscription clothing startups that have popped up over the past few years. But the irony is that most of the … | Continue reading
Lytro is taking its rich volumetric 3D camera capture technology into the world of cinema. The company’s light field solution is a truly beautiful technology that may eventually be in every camera we snap a shot or video with. The tech essentially uses data on all of the availabl … | Continue reading
Zirx was originally created as an app that let individuals order valet parking service, on-demand. But facing crushing costs, the San Francisco startup recently shifted its focus to the “mobility” needs of businesses. Now, Zirx gives companies free-to-use software, called the Zir … | Continue reading
The interest around chat bots is rapidly growing, and Betaworks is looking to capitalize. The startup studio responsible for companies like Giphy and Instapaper is today announcing that applications are open for BotCamp, a 90-day pre-seed program for chat bot startups. Investors … | Continue reading
The fall out in the London on-demand delivery space looks set to continue. This time it’s the turn of Delivery Cube, the startup that enabled take-outs to outsource delivery (and competitor to Delivery Hero’s now-shuttered Valk Fleet). Read More | Continue reading
HTC is set to announce its next flagship smartphone tomorrow at a NYC event. But here it is early. The leaked promotional video shows the evolution of HTC’s design with a chamfered edge, camera bump and oval-shaped home button — and like previous HTC devices, the next phone still … | Continue reading
Corporates are increasingly fearful of contracting innovator’s dilemma, a disease so deadly that, if it isn’t caught early, can be fatal. And in an attempt to vaccinate against the disease, said corporates are either acquiring, investing in, or incubating startups of their own.Th … | Continue reading
London-based VC firm Octopus Ventures has topped up its evergreen early stage startup investment fund with another £100 million, bringing the total backing the fund to more than £400 million. It says it plans to invest more than £75 million in early stage startups this year. Read … | Continue reading
The parent company of U.K. tabloid Daily Mail may make a bid for Yahoo’s news and media businesses. According to the WSJ, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) has held discussions with several private equity firms to partner on an offer. Read More | Continue reading
China’s track record for economic growth has been impressive in the last several decades, with China accounting for up to one-third of global growth in recent years. However, China is slowly transitioning from a manufacturing-reliant economy to one focused more on services. And, … | Continue reading
With language like this, social networks become a natural point of interaction between people and things, and TAGs will make it seem effortless for us all. This is already the way existing entities on the Internet (including Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) create relevance and c … | Continue reading
I contend that the iPad is in many ways *more* versatile than a laptop for people with disabilities. Computing and productivity isn’t always about a spec sheet or raw power or Photoshop. The iPad *is* a full-fledged computer, no question about it. After using a review unit for a … | Continue reading
Marvel Comics just launched a new Black Panther series, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates (that’s right, the well-known journalist and author of New York Times bestseller Between The World and Me) and drawn by Brian Stelfreeze. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the character, h … | Continue reading
My team, the Defense Digital Service (DDS) exists to bring in the best processes, talent, and technology from the private sector into the DoD. An offshoot from the United States Digital Service (USDS) at the White House, we’re tasked with transforming how the Pentagon builds and … | Continue reading
Regardless of your political orientation, it is hard to argue against the success of the digital media strategy that President Obama and his team implemented to engage millions of Americans over the past two terms. Read More | Continue reading
You’ll never guess how I got my given name as my Twitter handle. It involved a six-month campaign that included some light Internet stalking, badgering staff at Twitter, $250 and a visit to the patent office. In addition to being an early adopter, I’m an idiot. I failed to realiz … | Continue reading
After Cookie Monster, Taylor Swift, Alison Brie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Apple is releasing a new ad featuring a couple of celebrities. This time, basketball player Kobe Bryant and actor Michael B. Jordan are sitting on a couch watching a Bryant biopic. Read More | Continue reading
“Every failed on demand startup will reappear as a successful robotics driven business in five to 10 years.” So tweeted Jeremy Conrad, founding partner of the San Francisco-based hardware fund Lemnos Labs, one recent afternoon. Conrad apparently means what he tweets, having inves … | Continue reading
Entrepreneurs and investors need to build innovative products and services that benefit everyone, and not just the privileged. Unless Silicon Valley becomes more inclusive, eventually the populists will begin to bracket big tech with big banks and big oil as an enemy of ordinary … | Continue reading
Dries Buytaert and Matt Mullenweg recently posted calls to arms in defense of the “open web.” I, too, am a believer in the open web. It delivers on the promise of the Internet: a world in which everyone is connected, and you can command as much attention as your content deserves. … | Continue reading
Like so many organizations these days, Autodesk is a company in transition. It was until recently a traditional boxed software company selling licenses. Today, it’s moving to a subscription model. Yet its own business model disruption is only part of the story. As a company steep … | Continue reading
For all the “Start-up Nation” fanfare, Google’s acquisition of Waze – Israel’s highest profile start-up exit to date – was valued at just $1.1B. And, while Israel officially has two Unicorn companies on the CrunchBase list (more if you count companies like Taboola and WeWork), on … | Continue reading
It looks like some of the $55m Giphy raised recently was burning a hole in its pocket: GifGrabber is now part of the Giphy family, and the new version of the app turned up in the Mac App store today. Along with a name-change, the new version has a new capture system for high-defi … | Continue reading
I’m impatient to see breakthroughs in cars. I have high expectations for what Apple will do and respect for what Tesla has already done. I agree with Peter Thiel on the we-were-promised-jet-cars-but-got-140-characters thing, and with Larry Page who worries that Silicon Valley doe … | Continue reading
Technology has transformed how we work, communicate and travel. In contrast, modern digital technology has not yet transformed financial services. Open data is the key to change in this sector of the economy. The time has come for the financial services industry to join the open … | Continue reading
People often ask me about the impact of 3D printing on jobs. Will the technology be a job creator or destroyer? The short answer is, it will take more jobs than it makes — and 3D printing is not alone. Technology will eventually make work obsolete. Our big problems are going to b … | Continue reading
For long months now, Facebook Comments have been riddled by some of the most transparent, eye-roll-inducing “I make a good salary working from home” spam you’ve ever seen. Every mail service can filter it out; but Facebook? Home to cutting-edge AI research, massively scalable ser … | Continue reading
Siri is good for a lot of things, but she generally doesn’t care much whether you sound your usual perky self. Launching today is EmoWatch, a new app for your Apple Watch that will help you track your emotional state. EmoWatch is a technical demo for Smartmedical Corp’s Empath AP … | Continue reading
As a Berlin-based VC firm focused on SaaS, we often get questions about the current state of the European cloud software landscape. To be able to answer these questions more precisely we decided to analyze each major European ecosystem, starting with France. Our goal was to find … | Continue reading
The annual White House Science Fair is always a heartening occasion. Watching Obama ramble around and shoot the breeze (and sometimes marshmallows) with a bunch of smart, nerdy kids is entertaining, and the projects are often pretty impressive. This year’s fair is, of course, the … | Continue reading
At 4:43 pm EST, SpaceX successfully launched their next resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). In addition to a seamless launch, SpaceX landed the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket on an autonomous drone ship for the very first time. 1st stage has landed on … | Continue reading
There’s a new bot in town (Tokyo, specifically), and while it might not be as cute as Nao, as creepy as Spot and BigDog, or as anthropomorphic as Atlas, it might be more practical than all of them. It walks on two legs, but not like a man, or even a bear. This one, designed by Al … | Continue reading
As more and more online content ends up hosted on Facebook, it becomes more important for Facebook to provide ways for publishers and creators to make money. That’s why some changes announced today to the social network’s branded content and ads policies could be a big deal.Under … | Continue reading
BMW just launched a new car-sharing service called ReachNow that will enable Seattle residents to access 400 cars that they can pick up and drop off pretty much wherever they like, as long as that’s not on the outskirts of town. Eventually, the idea is to expand into cities natio … | Continue reading
Phil Libin has made his first investment since joining General Catalyst in a bot company called Begin that’s co-founded by GDGT co-founder Ryan Block, who left AOL Alpha in September last year to pursue the new venture.This is Libin’s first investment in bots, but it certainly wo … | Continue reading
Uber driver Michael Spelletz is launching a new ride sharing service with a twist: all the drivers and passengers will be women. Chariot for Women will be active in the Boston area on April 19. But does the world need another ride sharing service? Especially one so specific? It t … | Continue reading
This one’s for you, procrastinators. We are giving you one extra week to get tickets to Disrupt NY at the early-bird price point of $1,995 per ticket, a full $1,000 off the full retail price of $2,995. You now have until next Friday, April 15, to get in on this incredible discoun … | Continue reading
WordPress.com is adding HTTPS support for all its blogs. If you have a custom domain or have a blog under the wordpress.com domain name (like bestcrabrestaurantsinportland.wordpress.com), you’re good to go.While many social services like Facebook and Twitter have supported HTTPS … | Continue reading
This week, Tesla revealed its newest model; the HTC Vive VR headset dropped; the internet saw the largest leak of private documents ever; and Facebook’s chatbot plans were revealed. Here are the top tech stories from this week. Read More | Continue reading
I’ve spent most of my life in and around schools. First as a student, then as a teacher and lately as an innovator building tools and launching programs. As Nelson Mandela said, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Despite its importance, … | Continue reading