Back in 2013 I came across an intriguing startup in Berlin which had a genuinely original take on social networking (hard, even then). Sharing your mood intimately with someone had been confined largely to Snapchat. But the startup that became Taptalk wanted to mine that idea eve … | Continue reading
The lesson is this: we shouldn’t be focusing on hardware anymore. Perhaps instead we need to focus on what happens when hardware and software come together. Read More | Continue reading
Meet Stratumn, a Paris-based startup that wants to create a platform-as-a-service for developers interested in the blockchain. With Stratumn, you can build, deploy and run applications on the company’s platform, and these applications can communicate with the bitcoin blockchain. … | Continue reading
I own a lot of Bluetooth speakers. And I’ve played with even more. From powerful models from Bose and Libratone down to your basic Jawbone and the Amazon Echo. While each has its own specific strengths and weaknesses, they all have one thing in common: they’re pretty small and re … | Continue reading
If you’re a WhatsApp user — and the chances are high since more than a billion people open the app each month — you might be interested to know that the chat app just added some neat new formatting options. Now you can use bold, italics and strikethrough in your messages with fri … | Continue reading
If you’ve ever worked as a freelancer, you know the last thing you want to do — after lining up gigs, submitting your work, and reworking your project (when that last person on the client side decides he or she wants something entirely different) — is to handle all the administr … | Continue reading
Nintendo’s first smartphone application, “Miitomo,” now has a U.S. launch date: March 31st. In addition, the company says it will also be available in several other countries at the same time. While the company didn’t detail which countries will also receive the app, it will like … | Continue reading
Twitter announced this morning an effort to make its service more accessible to those who are visually impaired. Specifically, the company is now allowing users to add descriptions to images known as “alternative text,” or “alt text.” This lets people who are taking advantage of … | Continue reading
San Francisco has long been hailed the home of the tech startup — the place to be for entrepreneurs looking to lay the foundation for the next big thing. As a mobile app platform with high aspirations, we joined the mix, sharing an area code for four years with the lauded enginee … | Continue reading
French startup Rythm, which makes a tech-infused headset it claims improves sleep quality, announced Tuesday that it’s raised over $11 million from private investors and public grants. Read More | Continue reading
Are you an undergraduate or graduate student looking to attend the best startup show in the Big Apple? Student tickets to Disrupt NY 2016 are still available for just $300. Read More | Continue reading
SoundCloud is often billed as the “YouTube for audio” because of its huge trove of user-generated music and spoken-word tracks, uploaded by some 12 million creators and now listened to by some 175 million monthly users globally. But today the Berlin-based startup is (finally) tak … | Continue reading
Here’s why the imminent FCC vote to expand privacy protections to include broadband connections is important. Read More | Continue reading
As an increasing number of companies enter the fray, Betterment (at this point one of the industry’s elder statesmen) has raised $100 million in new financing to build out its war chest and invest in new products and services. Read More | Continue reading
Online interior design platform Havenly has raised $5.8 million, bringing its total Series A round of funding to $13.3 million. The round was led by Binary Capital with participation from Foundry Group and Chicago Ventures. Havenly plans to use the funding for growing the staff b … | Continue reading
Sallie Krawcheck isn’t your typical startup founder. For one thing, she was the president of Global Wealth and Investment Management at Bank of America. And the CFO of Citigroup. And the CEO of Smith Barney and Sanford Bernstein before that. In fact, Krawcheck, who remains highly … | Continue reading
Technology can and will solve the majority of shortcomings associated with wearables today. To use a baseball analogy, we are only in the third inning, and there is still a lot of ballgame to be played. Read More | Continue reading
China’s Xiaomi has launched the smart home product that many people have been waiting on: a smart rice cooker. Read More | Continue reading
Umbo CV has raised a $2.8 million seed round for its security cameras, which use artificial intelligence to identify suspicious activity and prevent crimes before they happen. The Taipei- and San Francisco-based startup’s funding was led by AppWorks Ventures, with participation f … | Continue reading
Japan’s Rakuten is joining e-commerce giants Amazon and Alibaba with a foray into drones. The Tokyo-based company, Japan’s largest e-commerce firm, revealed this week that it has invested in a done maker and it revealed plans to begin field trials in a unlucky place… the golf cou … | Continue reading
Samsung Pay is now available in China, about six weeks after competitor Apple Pay launched there. Read More | Continue reading
We constantly hear there are more seed and early stage funds now than ever before and more angels willing to give money to young companies looking to make it big. Until recently this explosion in the early stage funding environment really was a concern. Still, some firms, and the … | Continue reading
The Oculus Rift has been a long time coming. After delays upon delays, customers finally started receiving their Rift consumer units today, and Oculus will continue working to fulfill pre-orders of their virtual reality headset which is currently back-ordered until July. I’ve spe … | Continue reading
Today, a $2.3 million private-public partnership called the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) is releasing its first major report, in collaboration with Village Capital, a seed-stage accelerator that operates development programs for early-stage entrepreneurs around t … | Continue reading
In 1979, Brian Eno gave a lecture at the inaugural New Music America Festival in New York on a very Brian Eno-ish topic. Titled “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool,” it is most definitely worth a listen or a read. In the lecture, Eno discusses the ever-evolving relation … | Continue reading
What do you call it when you have an app that lets your friends take a photo of you, using your own phone? It’s not a selfie… It’s not a portrait… Let’s call it a someone elsie. Shootlr today launched an iOS and Android app that is attempting to take this brave new frontier of ph … | Continue reading
The FBI has unlocked Farook’s iPhone 5c involved in the San Bernardino shooting using an alternative method that didn’t involve Apple. Given this new development, the Department of Justice is dropping the case. The government has been evasive about this alternative method, but it … | Continue reading
After years of build up and pre-release developer kits, the first deliveries of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset started arriving this morning. Join us as we take our first steps into this crazy new future we’re in, won’t you? Read More | Continue reading
The cost of entry to the startup world has decreased dramatically in the last decade. We’re now at the point where the tools that were once only available to enterprise users have made their way into the hands of everyday users. Access to bleeding-edge innovation is no longer lim … | Continue reading
It wasn’t worth it for celebrities to respond to their endless digital fan mail until now. TipTalk lets them set a price for a private text, photo, or video response. The idea is that in their downtime, they could forge deeper relationships with their audience while earning enoug … | Continue reading
Instagram today is an endless sea of meaningless posts asking you to turn on post notifications for each account you follow. Brands and professional Instagrammers are worried that they are going to disappear from your Instagram feed once the company turns on its algorithmic feed. … | Continue reading
Live is having a moment. A key player in the shift to mobile live streaming, the Twitter-owned service Periscope this weekend celebrated its first year online. The company also revealed a few metrics indicating how quickly it had grown in the time since its March 2015, noting tha … | Continue reading
Today, the future became the present with the launch of the Oculus Rift. The reviews are in, but uncertainly hangs overhead with HTC and PlayStation’s VR headsets still on the way.Here are the tough questions that will determine what you should buy, the distribution of power betw … | Continue reading
Popular OS X and Linux BitTorrent client Transmission is coming to Windows. It’s not quite ready for prime time, but gHacks spotted the first Windows build on the official repository. But it’s already better than any other Windows BitTorrent client out there. Read More | Continue reading
Because everything is “smart” these days, wine bottles are getting an Internet connection, too. Meet Kuvée, a refillable case that keeps wine fresh for up to 30 days. Announcing $6 million in funding from General Catalyst, Founder Collective and others, Kuvée aims to impress your … | Continue reading
Remember the chaos surrounding Kanye West’s release of his new album, “The Life of Pablo” last month? The artist had originally said his album would be a Tidal exclusive, which drove fans to download the streaming music app in such great numbers that it ended up at the top of the … | Continue reading
Andre Swanston, CEO of Tru Optik, argued that there’s been one big obstacle to advertising on Internet-connected TVs — measurement. Naturally, Swanston is pitching Tru Optik’s technology as the solution. The company started out by measuring how video content gets shared through p … | Continue reading
Video network Vimeo has taken another step forward today with its efforts to better promote its original content – meaning those movies and programs available for rent or purchase on its network. Today, the company is making it possible for viewers to rent or buy films and series … | Continue reading
Yahoo-owned blogging platform Tumblr this morning announced two changes to its service designed to encourage more conversations and increase engagement around posts and other content. The company is bringing back its Replies feature, removed several months ago, and it’s rolling o … | Continue reading
Apple is the world’s most valuable company — no other company even comes close. That shouldn’t be surprising, as the Silicon Valley-based company has created an unparalleled hardware culture that more resembles a lifestyle than a brand. Apple is potentially worth more than a tril … | Continue reading
Even after months of repeatedly leaping in and out of disparate worlds filled with jaw-dropping (see above) environments, every time I’ve whipped off one of the various iterations of Oculus’s Rift virtual reality headset, for a brief moment I’ve always had to wonder where exactly … | Continue reading
Ain’t no party like a Netflix party cause a Netflix party eventually stops after a weekend of binging on House Of Cards and doesn’t start again until Netflix releases the new season the next year. But now there’s Netflix Party, a chrome extension that lets viewers sync their Netf … | Continue reading
You may know Dell as a computer and server maker, but Dell also operates a substantial IT services division — at least it did until today. NTT Data, the IT services company of NTT, is acquiring Dell Systems for $3.05 billion.The main reason why Dell sold off its division is that … | Continue reading
Music streaming service Pandora may be looking to sell itself, but more immediately it’s focused on firming up its management structure once again to shore up investor confidence. Today the company announced that founder Tim Westergren has taken the helm as CEO. Brian McAndrews, … | Continue reading
Shenzhen has become the go-to place to make your electronic dreams come true. But for most, it is still mostly a black box. From visitors to residents, here are some characters you can meet there. Like in this famous book, each of them can teach you a lesson. Let’s see what it is … | Continue reading
Seven rounds of betas weren’t enough — many iOS users are reporting on Apple’s support forums that a bug is affecting their devices. When they click on links in Safari, Chrome, Mail, Messages, Notes and others, the app freezes and crashes. If you’re one of them, here’s a fix that … | Continue reading
Facebook has apologized for accidentally sending Safety Check notifications for the Lahore, Pakistan suicide bombing to people in other areas, including the United States and United Kingdom. Users who got notified by SMS were especially alarmed and confused because the text asked … | Continue reading
Dell is reportedly finalizing the sale of its IT consulting unit to NTT Data for $3.5 billion. According to Reuters, the deal, which will help Dell’s pay down debt from its $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corp., may officially be announced today. Read More | Continue reading