Category: Tech news

 Chris McNamara stood at the overhang of what would be his final wingsuit BASE jump (parachuting or wingsuit flying from a fixed structure: building, antenna, span and Earth). A 1,500-foot drop was a conservative risk in a community that saw around 30 deaths last year. “After I took flight I had never realized how much physical strength was required in wingsuit BASE. I wasn’t nervous… Read More

 The argument seems compelling, the logic inescapable. As hardware doubles its density every 18-24 months, courtesy of Moore’s Law, and as software eats the world, technology will replace a broad swathe of jobs outright–from burger-flippers to physicians–and networks will atomize many others from full-time positions into gigs performed by many fungible workers. Tech, in… Read More

 The recent flurry of ad-tech acquisition deals clearly demonstrates that the industry is shifting its focus to developing solutions that support premium inventory. While all the attention has traditionally been around solving for RTB and the programmatic trading of low-value, non-guaranteed inventory, things are changing. Read More

 Y Combinator has helped over 800 startups come to market that are today worth a collective $30 billion (and possibly even more very soon). Now it looks like a new VC is emerging out of it that will be dedicated to help the most promising of these grow. TechCrunch has learned of a new VC fund called Crystal Towers. Backed by several YC founders, it will start out with between $90 million… Read More

 Happy Friday, everyone. We’re glad that you are with us today before we take off and drink beer celebrate America.
Our own Sarah Buhr took over the hosting slot this week, while Matthew Lynley and myself helped out. We dug into the release of Apple Music, Uber’s decision to absorb a large chunk of Microsoft’s Bing Maps team, and how Shyp, a startup, is helping shape the… Read More

 Technology has transformed entire industries over the past decade, from travel and transportation to media and real estate. While commerce has enjoyed some innovation, its transformation is far from over. The next frontier is “Commerce Everywhere,” which blends online and offline experiences to let you make purchases wherever and whenever you want. Read More

 Since about 10 seconds after Google launched its do-it-yourself Cardboard virtual reality headset, other companies have been selling pre-made clones — and Google is totally fine with that. The catch: many of the clones cost upwards of $20-30 bucks, and that’s before shipping. Paying that much for what is essentially a piece of cardboard can feel a bit silly. Looking to capitalize… Read More

 Last week we had a chance to sit down with the founders of Zeta Interactive, an online marketing service — which isn’t the first company that brought CEO David Steinberg and former Apple CEO John Sculley together. Zeta Interactive focuses on using data-mining and analytics to basically track where a customer came from. The example the pair used was tracking a car test drive from… Read More

 If you’ve ever tried to learn a foreign language, you probably know that most existing methods focus on aspects of the language that aren’t very helpful in everyday life. For example, newcomers to a language are often first taught the names of animals or colors, words that aren’t normally applicable to the common traveler. Smigin aims to fix this problem with its app… Read More

Blue Apron, the NY-based startup that delivers weekly pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to your home, has been cooking over the past year. The company recently announced that it had surpassed 1 million meals shipped monthly, putting estimated yearly revenue at $120 million. And if that weren’t enough, the company raised $135 million in Series D at a $2 billion valuation. We sat… Read More

 After a record-breaking year of growth in 2014, venture capital investors in healthcare seem to have settled into a groove. They invested roughly $2.8 billion in healthcare technologies through the second quarter of 2015, down from $3.3 billion over the same period last year, according to a study from Startup Health. Read More

 Dots, the incredibly basic but addicting mobile game created by gaming studio Playdots, is getting its first major upgrade in over a year. Dots now features three new themes: Space, Mod Synth, and Desert. There’s also a custom “Designer” option if users prefer to select their own dot and background color palate.  The goal of the game is simple — connect… Read More

Geniac, which operates in the rarefied world of “business management” platforms, has raised £22 million from Grant Thornton UK, a big provider of assurance and tax advisory. To date, Geniac has been in beta.
The London-based Geniac was founded by ex-Accenture consultants Michael Galvin and Eduardo Martinez to allow businesses to run themselves within one platform.
The so-called… Read More

 As wearable activity trackers get increasingly smart and complex, Fatigue Science is measuring one thing and one thing only — how we sleep. Fatigue Science’s Readiband looks very similar to a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband. It has a 3D accelerometer that tracks movement, impact, velocity, speed and frequency, a battery that lasts 60 days between charges, and it’s both water… Read More

 All the buzz this week may be about the launch of Apple Music, but another popular streaming music application, SoundCloud, has also now rolled out a notable update to its mobile application. The update – which delivers new features including related tracks, shuffle, direct playlist editing, and more – is aimed at both improving music discovery and the overall user experience.… Read More