Category: Tech news

 Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter announced today that it’s partnering with payments service Stripe, which will now collect and process all payments for projects hosted on Kickstarter’s site. Since its founding, Kickstarter used Amazon Payments for this, but claims it had to make the switch because late last year, Amazon decided to discontinue the payments product that Kickstarter… Read More

 Today, we are tickled to introduce the Hardware Battlefield 2015 participants. The 14 startups represent what we at TechCrunch feel are the most interesting, most promising early stage hardware companies being built. Whether drones, connected homes, robots or 3D printing are your fancy, we’ve got you covered with this batch. Over the past month these companies have been working tirelessly… Read More

 Fitness startup Fitmob recently began partnering with gyms and launching a monthly subscription plan, which has led to a huge jump in revenue. To accelerate that growth and expand into new cities, the company raised $5 million in funding. Read More

 As we enter a new year, innovation is advancing across a broad front — mobile, data analytics, virtualization, security, the sharing economy, payment systems and more. That’s the good news. Here’s the not-so-good news. As in the period leading up to the dot-com bust in the late ’90s, enthusiasm for technology startups is running ahead of their reasonable prospects. We… Read More

 Square Cash, Square’s Venmo competitor that lets you use the app to transfer money to other people, has added a new feature to its iOS app that some might say is long overdue: users can now authenticate money transfers using the Touch ID feature in later versions of the iPhone (5S and up), and pay no fees when sending that cash. The feature is now live in the latest update to the… Read More

Ultimate Ears has done exactly what everyone expected it to do: release a bigger version of its winning portable speaker. The UE Megaboom is bigger, louder, and smarter. It’s also our new favorite Bluetooth portable.

The post Review: UE Megaboom appeared first on WIRED.

OXO’s new cold-brewer is a smartly designed, mostly plastic $50 kit that still requires some trial and error for the perfect coffee.

The post Review: OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker appeared first on WIRED.

 Private marketplaces (PMPs) provide publishers with a new avenue for selling premium inventory to an exclusive set of buyers. Launched with the best of intentions, they’re an attempt to reconcile competing interests in an evolving marketplace. At first glance, PMPs appear to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both publishers and advertisers. In practice, however, it’s far from… Read More

 Banking has gone from somewhere you go to something you do. If we are to believe that the sharing economy will shape our future, banking and all financial services will become something that merely exists in the background, similar to other basic utilities. Read More

 These are heady days for education technology. In fact, with big investments in outfits like Everspring and Udemy, I’d say 2014 was the biggest year yet in edtech. However, if you thought that was impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet. What does 2015 hold for the year in this fast-moving sector? Read More

 In October of last year, Brookings published an essay by Robert Kaiser entitled “The Bad News About The News,” which was probably well-intentioned, but was also — I’m sorry to say — hilariously bloviated, self-important, and wrongheaded. It did, however, accidentally raise a few quite interesting points. Read More

 Hot on the heels of a partnership with Dun & Bradstreet, the announcement of the Datalogix acquisition marks an aggressive move on Oracle’s part — an attempt to prove to the market that they’re getting serious about data-driven marketing. Salesforce had added Datalogix to its Marketing Cloud back in April 2014. This Oracle acquisition will probably be making some… Read More

 Update: Twitter tells us that the FAQ and terms are in reference to promoted video services for Amplify users, not the new video player that it plans to launch for consumers in the first half of 2015. Original article below. Back in November 2014, Twitter announced that it would be launching a native video service in the first half of 2015 as part of its bigger strategy to position itself as… Read More

 As we bear witness to the aftermath of major attacks this year against the likes of Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus and most recently, Sony, it becomes clear that we are entering an entirely new “war” against cyber crime. Those who do not change their approach will lose. Read More

 From Anonymous leaking account information to rumors of Microsoft building a new browser, here are the top stories from 12/27-1/2.

1. Following through on threats of a Christmas hack, a Twitter account claiming affiliation with Anonymous released a list of usernames and passwords for 13,000 accounts on Amazon, PlayStation, XBox Live, Hulu Plus, Walmart and other retail and entertainment… Read More