Category: Tech news

 For such a simple tool, the white cane has been incredibly enduring. With all of the technological advances that have been made over the past century, we haven’t come up with much better than a stick with a metal tip for helping the visually impaired get around. Researchers at MIT have been working on a wearable solution designed to augment and, hopefully, one day replace the cane. Read More

 Face-swapping — taking your image and adjusting it to fit on to a different body, creature or object — has taken the photo app world by storm, as millions of people look for new and novel things to do with their selfies. Microsoft is the latest company to enter the fray. The company’s in-house app studio Microsoft Garage has quietly launched a new app — the aptly… Read More

 Some 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity worldwide today, most in rural areas across Southeast Asia, China, India and Sub-Saharan Africa. While others are focused on wiring up those places and developing new energy sources, a startup called Evaptainers has created a kind of refrigerator that requires no electricity, but instead runs on water. Read More

 Major technology platforms shift every 10-15 years, with new platforms building on the ones they preceded. We’re due for the next major technology platform shift, and artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality are those next platforms. So how do you maximize value creation for the next wave? Read More

 This week President Trump made the senseless decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, prompting Elon Musk and Bob Iger to leave the White House advisory councils. Blue Apron filed for IPO, and Mary Meeker’s 2017 internet trends report was released. These are some of the top events that happened in tech this week. Read More

 There are many places to find travel inspiration. But a new application called Sherpa launching this week believes that some of the best travel ideas can be found on Instagram. The iOS application curates photos from top Instagram photographers and turns them into visual travel guides that are augmented with data from other services, like Foursquare and Wikipedia. Read More

 When small and medium businesses want to build a website, they can take advantage of easy-to-use web tools like Squarespace — but who do they turn to when they need more technical help? New York City startup Lorem Technologies is trying to make this process easier. Read More

 As the U.S. seems to be hell-bent on making itself less attractive to immigrants and visitors, its neighbors to the north are sensing an opening and going the other way in an effort to attract the smartest tech entrepreneurs. Read More

 Penguin’s business-focused imprint Portfolio plans to publish a book recounting the legal dispute between Gawker Media and wrestler Hulk Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bolea). The currently untitled book was acquired by Portfolio’s Niki Papadopoulos for what the publisher said is a “significant” sum. It’s scheduled for release this winter. Read More

Uber fires its head of autonomous driving, Anthony Levandowski, Essential releases its new phone and Echo competitor and Intel’s Core X gets extra extreme. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 You won’t be happy unless you’re going Mach 2 with your hair on fire Read More

 Outspoken venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took the stage at Code Conference on Tuesday and reflected on the disconnect between the technology community and the rest of the United States. Read More

 Through Lyft and Uber, the sharing economy has taken a charge at cabs. Airbnb is making hotels palpitate in their pants. If TRVL has its way, it’s the travel agencies’ turn to tremble. Armed with 2.7 million freshly minted dollars from a conglomerate of angel investors, the company is hoping to augment services like Booking.com, Hotels.com and Tripadvisor by adding a soupçon of… Read More

 Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage at Code Conference on Tuesday and talked about why he owns a large position in Twitter. At one point Ballmer owned 4 percent of the company, but he declined to say how much he still owns, just referring to it as a “large percentage.” Read More

 Twitter is testing a new interface for its mobile applications on iOS and Android, which involves rounded profile images, buttons and other features. It’s unclear what advantage going “round” would bring. Read More