Before we begin, I feel compelled to make an important disclosure: I love robots! Robots are cool. To me, robots are cooler than people, who are only cool occasionally. I especially love industrial robots: They help us “make” things. Now please allow me to make an obvious observa … | Continue reading
The public’s taste in drones is growing more sophisticated. The industry is improving so quickly that major new features are released every year, if not every few months. If a company wants to sell to the increasingly savvy entry-level quadcopter space, it needs to build a drone … | Continue reading
I occasionally meet people who think the Internet is going to go away someday. Yes, some of its pieces do move around a bit. Bye, Friendster! Hello, Peach!* But its core benefit — your ability to find any information any time, and to build relationships around common interests at … | Continue reading
Source code bugs have been a constant in the software industry since the dawn of computers — and have ever been a major source of attacks, exploits and security incidents. With virtually every aspect of our lives and daily business becoming connected and dependent on software in … | Continue reading
With icons like Leonardo DiCaprio and Bill Gates using their powerful brands and personal convictions to turn the world’s focus toward the crisis of climate change and the long-lever arm of energy efficiency, it’s time for policy makers and practitioners to get serious about find … | Continue reading
Today’s retail economy is focused on acquisition and retention costs. Getting into people’s homes and turning them into long-term brand buyers is the goal, and appliance makers control an untapped resource — the Internet of Things — that can effectively extend a brand or retailer … | Continue reading
After months and years of anticipation, the first Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has been delivered into a customer’s hands. Ross Martin was the very first person to get a pre-order in for the Rift when they opened in early January. As a celebratory gesture, Palmer Luckey fl … | Continue reading
The Kindle is great for linear fiction, but my biggest frustration is trying to consume content that isn’t meant to be enjoyed from first to last page. Travel books are terrible for that, for example: You’ll forever find yourself flipping between overview and local maps, the “wha … | Continue reading
Sure, it’s technologically advanced, but it lacks a general understanding of what’s socially acceptable to say, the real world and the way humans interact. In the last couple of months, Microsoft has had a couple of failed attempts with artificial intelligence. The first involved … | Continue reading
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Frank Radice, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, March 25, 2016. The Gang floats on the border between virtual fiction and greater reality. Plus, the latest G3 w/ Mary Hodder, Rebecca Woodcock, Francine Hardaway, … | Continue reading
It’s long been the case that life sciences investors don’t get the attention that their more traditional tech counterparts do. They’re underrepresented on lists of top investors in venture capital. They’re also remarkably underfunded, according to institutional investors (or limi … | Continue reading
Immense hype surrounds virtual currencies and distributed ledgers these days. Maybe this is inevitable if you combine an inscrutable, cutting-edge technology, its enigmatic origins, and a flow of $1 billion in venture funding thus far. But will these technologies create pathways … | Continue reading
In the wake of Paris, San Bernardino, and now Brussels, the encryption debate has become such a potent cocktail of horror, idiocy, and farce that it has become hard to tease out any rational threads of discussion. There is so much stupidity that I hardly know where to begin; but … | Continue reading
If you think about it, money is a ridiculous concept. Without going into a William Jennings Bryan gold standard history lesson, let’s just say the idea that I can hold this thing, this little cloth rectangle of varying denomination, and exchange it for tangible goods and service … | Continue reading
DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it’s not an automation moonshot like the self-driving car challenges of the early 2000s or the recent Robotics Challenge. The Defense Department’s R&D wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of rea … | Continue reading
Twitter, which turned 10 this week, has apparently made Live its entire organizing principle. At an all-hands meeting last month, Mark Zuckerberg declared live video a top priority for Facebook. Clearly, Zuck’s directing his fight toward Twitter’s Periscope, a mobile live streami … | Continue reading
2020 is set to be a good year for Mars exploration. The United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Europe, and Russia all have planned Mars missions that are scheduled to launch, or likely to launch, in that year. There have been over 40 missions to Mars throughout history. … | Continue reading
Peter Thiel’s decades old Founders Fund pulled together another $1.3 billion dollars today for Founders Fund VI. Thiel, a billionaire investor in Facebook and SpaceX and co-founder of Paypal, will remain at the helm, with partners Lauren Gross, Ken Howery, Geoff Lewis, Scott Nola … | Continue reading
The colossal and highly public failure of Microsoft’s Twitter-based chatbot Tay earlier this week raised many questions: How could this happen? Who is responsible for it? And is it true that Hitler did nothing wrong? After a day of silence (and presumably of penance), the company … | Continue reading
A recent article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung titled “Will Facebook Enslave Us?” captures a sentiment prevalent among companies around the world: admiration for Silicon Valley — albeit, with a dash of fear. International media outlets eagerly cover disruption developing in l … | Continue reading
Gillmor Gang – Frank Radice, Robert Scoble Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. LIVE recording session today, March, 25, 2016, at 1pmPT/4pmET.Gillmor Gang LIVE chat during show recordingGillmor Gang on Facebook HEREG3 on Facebook HEREG3 archives on Ustream Read More | Continue reading
500 Startups has been aiming to globalize its brand and work towards attracting the attention of young, cool companies outside the Bay Area echo chamber. This has taken 500’s investments into distant corners of the world with dedicated funds and accelerators scoping out what has … | Continue reading
Meet Privacy, a new startup with a confusing name but an interesting product. Privacy lets you generate a virtual burner card every time you need to enter your credit card number on the web. Your actual credit card number stays safe, and you get more control over your online subs … | Continue reading
Last week, NHTSA and IIHS announced that 20 auto manufacturers and three agencies had agreed to include automatic emergency braking (AEB) as standard equipment by 2022. Toyota was one of those 20 companies, but this week they upped the AEB ante: Nearly every Toyota and Lexus mode … | Continue reading
Google is launching the Android Experiments I/O Challenge today in an effort to bring more interesting open-source apps to its Android Experiments showcase. The three winners of the challenge, which will run until April 13, will get a trip to this year’s Google I/O developer conf … | Continue reading
If you’re in the market for a giant 84-inch 4K touchscreen computer (and have about $22,000 set aside for that), today is a good day. After numerous delays, Microsoft today started shipping its Surface Hub to business customers. Surface Hub comes in both the giant 84-inch version … | Continue reading
Snapchat, the rapidly growing social application favored by mobile’s youngest users, has hit a notable milestone: for the first time ever, its iOS application reached the top of the iTunes App Store, where it briefly become the #1 Overall free application in the U.S. While Snapch … | Continue reading
If you’ve tried streaming Master of None from your tablet running on Verizon on AT&T, chances are it looked like a big pile of unwatchable pixels. It turns out Netflix is quietly capping videos on these networks so that you don’t burn through your entire data cap in just a few ho … | Continue reading
Fortune is reporting that Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging platform that has today become the number one free app on the App Store, has agreed to acquire Bitstrips, the folks behind popular emoji-creation service Bitmoji. Though we haven’t received confirmation from Bitstrips or … | Continue reading
In contrast to the more traditional top down, generally involving the sale to a CIO or VP, the bottoms up sales approach enable each employee to be a credit card carrying decision maker. Read More | Continue reading
It was already on public record that Andrey Andreev, the low-profile Russian founder of European dating behemoth Badoo, is an investor in female-led dating app Bumble, the Tinder competitor founded by ex-Tinder employee Whitney Wolfe. However, TechCrunch can now reveal a number o … | Continue reading
Over 30 million Americans have used an online dating service or mobile dating app, according to Pew Research Center. Yet Black online users face apparent bias: Data collected from 25 million OkCupid accounts demonstrated that when users rated their matches they penalized Black me … | Continue reading
While improvements in camera-phone technology have led to our mobile devices slowly but surely replacing clunky single-purpose cameras, most heavy editing and production still has to be done on desktops. This is especially true for live video, which often requires a full mixing b … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, on-demand car service Lyft announced its plans to integrate with Waze’s software, allowing its drivers to automatically receive updated routes for more efficient and faster fare completions. Now, that integration has gone live – according to the the Lyft mobile … | Continue reading
Badoo is today launching photo-verification and verified profiles to make online dating safer. Most folks don’t know that Badoo is the silent giant in online dating. Globally, the 10-year-old company is bigger than any other online dating platform, including OkCupid, Match.com, e … | Continue reading
June, a countertop “smart” oven designed by former Google, Apple and GoPro employees has closed a Series A round of financing for $22.5 million today, led by early stage combination hardware and software investor Eclipse. Previous investors also participated in this round, includ … | Continue reading
Good news for amateur and professional photograph enthusiasts. Google has just made its Nik photo editing software available completely free of charge. Read More | Continue reading
Universities in the U.S. are a wellspring of innovation, but they are almost certainly killing off some (really) good ideas too early. Investors should be paying more attention to how innovation is treated at the places it originates. Read More | Continue reading
It was a busy week filled with tall things Apple, GCP NEXT, and Y Combinator Winter Demo Day. Next week we’ll have coverage of Microsoft Build, Tesla’s unveiling, and more. Until then, here are the top stories of the week. Read More | Continue reading
We are accustomed to hearing that European tech is perpetually in Silicon Valley’s shadow. Now there have been suggestions that the local tech scene is starting to feel Silicon Valley’s valuation woes. If true, this should raise alarm bells, because if European technology startup … | Continue reading
Sanitation and Health Rights in India is the fruit of work that 29-year-old Anoop Jain has struggled with for the better part of the last six years. After a trip to the Himalayas left Jain with an abiding sense of the profound transformations that could be wrought through non-pro … | Continue reading
It seems that some iOS users on older devices are running into a snag during the 9.3 update. If you have an iPhone 5S, iPad Air or earlier model, you might want to wait a few days for the update to the update. Read More | Continue reading
For human lip readers, context is key in deciphering words stripped of the full nuance of their audio cues. But a technology model for lip-reading developed at the University of East Anglia in the UK has been shown to be able to interpret mouthed words with a greater degree of ac … | Continue reading
Longing for the days of the sticky floored arcades of your youth and long nights spent with the the Atari 2600, but can’t be bothered to dig through your mum’s basement to find all the bits and bobs to throw yourself into a retro-gaming binge? Aren’t you in some industrial-streng … | Continue reading
Apple’s plans for its first original TV show don’t make it sound like a swing-for-the-fences, House of Cards-style project. Instead, it’s working on an unscripted TV series about apps and app developers.There are some big names attached, though, including musician Will.i.am and T … | Continue reading
Supersonic planes, food harvesting robots, and instant HIV diagnosis were some of the ideas that wowed us on Demo Day 2 for Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch. We queried investors and TechCrunch’s writers to come up with our top 8 picks from all 59 startups that presented. Check o … | Continue reading
Martin Hellman, Stanford Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, was one of those awarded this year’s Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery. Named for computer science pioneer Alan Turing, the award is widely regarded as the highest distinction in Computer … | Continue reading
When you think about the fastest growing areas for startup investments, you probably don’t think about classified ads. More likely, your mind wanders to music apps, e-commerce or social platforms. It’s understandable; after all, the classified ad industry has barely innovated sin … | Continue reading