Lyft Appeals To More Casual Drivers By Matching Them With Passengers To Share Commutes

Lyft With the launch of Driver Destination, Lyft will for the first time give its drivers some freedom in being able to accept rides based on where a particular passenger is going. It also could open up its service to a more casual group of drivers. Read More

Tumblr Overtakes Instagram As Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is The Fastest-Growing App

Screen Shot 2014-11-25 at 16.57.16 With 1.35 billion active monthly users, Facebook continues to be the world’s largest social network by some margin, but  when it comes to picking up new users, it appears to have reached a saturation point. Research out today from the Global Web Index notes that Tumblr’s active user base in the last six months grew by 120%, while Facebook’s grew by only 2%. And… Read More

Zendrive Lets Ridesharing And Delivery Companies Know If Their Drivers Are Distracted

91892622_b35fcfeab2_o Zendrive, a startup that uses smartphone sensors to measure drivers’ behavior, today announced ZenFleets, its first paid service. As the name implies, ZenFleets is meant for companies that have a large number of cars on the road at any given time. With ZenFleets, businesses can track where those cars are, but more importantly, the service also tries to figure out if the driver is focused… Read More

Inspace Aims To Rocket Us Into Virtual Reality

Screen Shot 2014-11-25 at 10.48.04 AM In the yeaaaaarrrr 2000! As I recall, we were all supposed to be flying around with jetpacks and using Minority Report-esque hardware by now, but that still hasn’t come to pass. Thankfully the folks at InSpace are on the job. The system, which is mostly software, allows you to see media and information in a three-dimensional space. Before you chortle into your beard while thinking of all… Read More

Twitter Expands Its Commerce Lineup With Twitter Offers, Which Link To Your Credit Or Debit Card

twitter offers screenshot Twitter just announced that it’s testing a new commerce product called Twitter Offers.
This follows the announcement of Twitter’s first commerce product back in September, a “Buy” button allowing users to make purchases directly from tweets. Read More

Lumoid Launches A Peer-To-Peer Marketplace For Short-Term Gadget Rentals

lumoid locals The introduction of Lumoid Locals should enable the company to expand its potential inventory while also allowing its users to make their gear available to others. Launching in San Francisco to start, the Locals marketplace also provides a low-touch way for Lumoid to make money while connecting customers with one another. Read More

A Gift Guide For Watch Lovers, The Guy’s Edition

giftguide-splash-menswatches Watches make a great gift (and I’m not just saying that because I love them and write about them.) Watches are personal items that you wear and say something about you; they are functional tools; and they can embody beautiful designs. Watch lovers tend to focus mostly on mechanical watches, which have a timelessness to them and are typically considered more prestigious that ones powered… Read More

IDC: iPad Sees First-Ever Decline As Wider Tablet Shipment Growth Drops 7.2% In 2014 To 235.7M Units

ipad-mini-3-feature As Apple rides a cresting wave in the stock market with its market cap now dancing around $700 billion, a dark cloud moves in from IDC. The analysts report today that full-year iPad shipments will decline for the first time in its history, amid a sluggish market overall for tablets. Apple — which ironically now offers more models of its iPad tablet than ever before — will… Read More

Tumblr Rolls Out Mobile App Install Ads In The Form Of Shareable Sponsored Posts

TwoDotsSTAs Tumblr this morning is rolling a new mobile-only ad unit called “Tumblr Sponsored Apps” which will allow app publishers to target the social blogging service’s largely Millennial and heavily mobile audience with creative posts designed to drive users to the iTunes App Store and Google Play to download new applications. App install ads, as these units are commonly called,… Read More

Is It The Beginning Of The End For Cable Or Just A New Beginning?

hbo-cbs In mid-October of this year, HBO dropped a bombshell — albeit a long-rumored one — with the news that it would launch a standalone streaming service sometime in 2015. The media and Game of Thrones fans everywhere immediately went into overdrive, analyzing every last one of the scarce details to death (What content will be included? How much will it cost? Should I cancel my… Read More

Google’s Nexus 6 Might Be Too Big For Right Now, But Right-Sized For The Future

Nexus 6-3 As Greg Kumparak noted in the TechCrunch review of the Nexus 6, the phone is very large. Too large, in fact, for most humans. Back when it was just a rumor that Google would be picking Motorola to provide the Nexus 6 hardware, and that it would indeed be a monster with a 6-inch display, I lamented the phabletization of the Nexus line before it was even a real thing. Now, I’ve had some… Read More