Augmented Reality technology did not, it turned out, light the touch paper on a booming new industry. What we got instead was a few cute applications on smartphones and devices like Microsoft’s Hololens, which has seen pretty limited success. Where AR has proved that it may have a future is in industry, allowing workers to
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Drones making deliveries is of course the hot new hyperlocal tech play, but where are these futuristic aircraft supposed to land? On the lawn? Matternet has built a landing station for its cargo drones that looks less like a piece of infrastructure and more like a death ray from a ’60s sci-fi movie. Far from
Fitness, wallpaper, and lost item-finding startups could have a big new competitor baked into everyone’s iPhones. Leaks of the code from iOS 14 that Apple is expected to reveal in June signal several new features and devices are on the way. Startups could be at risk due to Apple’s ability to integrate these additions at
Two video startups are making dueling legal claims against the other. The Wall Street Journal broke the news yesterday that interactive video company Eko is accusing Quibi of infringing on its patented technology. At around the same time, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Quibi (which is launching its short-form mobile video service next month) has
Monograph, a startup working on cloud-based software that makes project and cost management easier for architects, announced today that it has raised $1.9 million in seed funding. The round was led by Homebrew Ventures and Parade Ventures, with participation from Designer Fund, Hustle VC and angel investors. The San Francisco-based startup was founded last year
Twitter today updated its Developer Policy to clarify rules around data usage, including in academic research, as well as its position on bots, among other things. The policy has also been entirely rewritten in an effort to simplify the language used and make it more conversational, Twitter says. The new policy has been shortened from
Dell’s 2015 decision to buy EMC for $67 billion remains the largest pure tech deal in history, but a transaction of such magnitude created a mountain of debt for the Texas-based company and its primary backer, Silver Lake. Dell would eventually take on close to $50 billion in debt. Years later, where are they in
Startups have welcomed proposals from the European Commission aimed at cutting red tape and shrinking cross-border barriers for small businesses as part of a new EU industrial strategy plan with a twin focus on digital and green transitions unveiled today. Among the package of measures being proposed by the European Union’s executive body are for
I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: crowdsourcing in space, vision on a chip, robots underground and under the skin and
The underpinnings of how app store analytics platforms operate were exposed this week by BuzzFeed, which uncovered the network of mobile apps used by a popular analytics firm Sensor Tower to amass app data. The company had operated at least 20 apps, including VPNs and ad blockers, whose main purpose was to collect app usage
Everlaw is bringing modern data management, visualization and machine learning to eDiscovery, the process in which legal entities review large amounts of evidence to build a case. Today, the company announced a $62 million Series C investment. CapitalG (Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund) and Menlo Ventures led the round. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and K9
Cleanly, the YC-backed company that looked to bring tech to the laundry industry, has today announced a merger with NextCleaners. The New York-based companies signed an all-stock deal after more than a year of negotiations, with Cleanly founder and CEO Tom Harari serving as Chairman of the Board and Next CEO Kam Saifi will stay
Google VP Vint Cerf has voiced support for a single set of standards for Internet platforms to apply around political advertising. Speaking to the UK parliament’s Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee today, the long time Googler — who has been chief Internet evangelist at the tech giant since 2005 — was asked about the targeting
Electric, the platform that delivers IT services to small and medium businesses, has today announced that it has raised an additional $14.5 million on its Series B from 01 Advisors, the fund led by Twitter alums Dick Costolo and Adam Bain. Though the funding is a part of the company’s Series B financing, founder Ryan
MessageBird, the Amsterdam-headquartered cloud communications platform backed by Accel in the U.S. and Europe’s Atomico, is unveiling another new product today, this time taking aim at the $350 billion customer service market. Dubbed Inbox.ai and positioned as “Slack for external communications,” the new product — which is to be offered largely for free — enables
Facebook’s latest colonization of Instagram has begun. Facebook is testing the option to cross-post Stories to Instagram, instead of just vice-versa. Hopefully, that means the two apps will finally sync up the ‘already viewed’ status of cross-posted Stories so we don’t have to watch re-runs any more, as I harped about in January. If fully
As Stanford, Princeton, Columbia and others shutter classrooms to limit the coronavirus outbreak, college educators around the country are clambering to move their classes online. At the same time, tech companies that enable remote learning are finding a surge in usage and signups. Zoom Video Communications, a videoconferencing company, has been crushing it in the
At least it’s over. The markets endured their worst day of trading of this young year as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points to close at 23,850.79 — a 7.79% decline. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 624.94, to close at 7,950.68, and losses to the S&P 500 triggered a temporary halt on trading
The tradition of sitting through a barrage of ads in exchange for being entertained began with radio, flourished with the arrival of television and followed the mass migration online. As the massive $35 billion in advertising revenue captured by YouTube and Instagram in the last quarter indicated, online advertising around social media, influencers and streamers
In the age of coronavirus, we all have to resist the urge to touch our faces. It’s how the virus can travel from doorknobs or other objects to your mucus membranes and get you sick. Luckily, a startup called Slightly Robot had already developed a wristband to stop another type of harmful touching — trichotillomania,
‘We started as a side project… and side projects can’t afford offices’ Greg Kumparak @grg / 7 hours When Zapier was founded in 2011, it was a side project for three friends from Missouri who wanted to make it easier to connect any one web app to another. Nine years, millions of users and around
Today was an awful day for the stock market, with global and domestic equities falling sharply as the world digested a collapse in oil prices, and yet another weekend of the spread of COVID-19. All major U.S. indices were down, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling the least of the three, slipping a comparatively modest 7.29%,
On Monday, Facebook announced the addition of two new names to its board of directors, Nancy Killefer and Tracey T. Travis. Killefer brings potentially valuable government insight to Facebook, as she served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration. With last year’s departure of former Clinton administration chief of staff Erskine
TFLiving, looking to bring amenities to residential and commercial spaces, has today announced the close of a $4.8 million seed financing led by Camber Creek. Courtside Ventures, and other strategic investors, also participated in the round. TFLiving uses technology to connect service providers, like massage therapists, yoga instructors and dog walkers, with property managers and
According to a report from 9to5mac, Apple could be working on full cursor support for the next major version of iOS and iPadOS. The report is based on code of an early version of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. If Apple ships that new feature, it means that you’ll be able to use a Bluetooth
A small consolation in the growing COVID-19 crisis is that some of our moderate germophobia has begun to feel like a minor super power. As I got settled for a cross-country flight last week, I took out my hand wipes and did a whole number on the screen, tray table and arm rests, and this
Goodlord, the London ‘proptech’ startup that offers cloud-based software to help estate agents, landlords and tenants manage the rental process, appears to have achieved somewhat of a turn-around after it fell into difficulty two years ago. Since then the company installed a new CEO and CTO, and raised further funding. Today Goodlord is announcing its
Australia’s privacy watchdog is suing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach — which, back in 2018, became a global scandal that wiped billions off the tech giant’s share price yet only led to Facebook picking up a $5BN FTC fine. Should Australia prevail in its suit against the tech giant the monetary penalty could
Box has joined a number of tech companies supporting employees to work remotely from home in response the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19. It’s applying the policy to all staff, regardless of location. Late yesterday Box co-founder Aaron Levie tweeted a statement detailing the cloud computing company’s response to COVID-19 — to, as
The European Parliament has instructed vulnerable staff with a pre-existing health condition to work from home on account of increased personal risk related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, according to sources and an email reviewed by TechCrunch. The European Commission confirmed its first cases of coronavirus last week, after a staffer at