BlackBerry files suit against Nokia in a battle of once mighty smartphone brands

BlackBerry Ltd. signage is displayed in front of the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, July 6, 2016. BlackBerry will no longer manufacture the BlackBerry Classic, a beloved, updated model of the original that made the company a smartphone leader before Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. dethroned it. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images BlackBerry suing Nokia is 2017 is a bit like the secret Rocky/Apollo Creed fight in Rocky III revealed in 2015’s Creed – two once mighty champions doing battle one more time, with a heck of lot fewer people looking on. Also, there are a couple of series reboots in the works. A lot has changed since the once mighty phone makers glory days. These days both have moved away from… Read More

AncestryDNA clustered 770,000 genomes to find your family’s American immigration story

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 31: People headed to Ellis Island look out at the Statue of Liberty as it stands in New York Harbor in the snow on January 31, 2017 in New York City. With President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, the subject of who can come to America has once again become a hotly debated topic in the country. The executive order temporarily bars immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya, and indefinitely prevents all Syrian refugees, from entering the U.S.  (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Immigration into the U.S. is a hot political topic right now, but, unless you’re Native American, pretty much everyone here has a family history involving some sort of immigration story. Now AncestryDNA, a consumer genetics subsidiary of the genealogy research site Ancestry.com, wants to help you know more about your family’s immigration journey. To do so, the research… Read More

Leveling the playing field for women in tech is vital for emerging industries

Laying a new (artificial) cricket pitch. When I hear about the need to push gender diversity in tech and improve gender disparity in the industry, it takes me a second to appreciate the full reality of the situation. When the industry’s playing field is devised and maintained mostly by men, it leaves women at an inherent disadvantage. The bias is hardwired into the system, making it hard for men to see the problem. Read More

WTF is lidar?

wtf-is-lidar Long ago, people believed that the eye emitted invisible rays that struck the world outside, causing it to become visible to the beholder. That’s not the case, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a perfectly good way to see. In fact, it’s the basic idea behind lidar, a form of digital imaging that’s proven very useful in everything from archaeology… Read More

A conversation about tech M&A trends and Trump

robot handshake Some very big brands outside the tech space have been stepping in to acquire technology companies as the pressure to keep up with consumer-powered digital trends touches more industries. Add in a deregulating President Trump and the mercury could keep rising for tech company valuations this year, suggests John Stiffler, senior M&A director at business and technology consulting firm West… Read More

Can you trust crypto-token crowdfunding?

crowdfunding In 2016, blockchain startups raised some $200 million in Initial Coin Offerings, a new form of crowdfunding based on cryptocurrency tokens. Some of the startups have raked in millions of dollars; several have failed to deliver. Expert opinion is highly polarized on the crypto-token crowdfunding hype, its reliability, its legality and its future. Here’s what you need to know. Read More

Political strategist Bradley Tusk on his fast rise in Silicon Valley

32774045466_1705e31f0a_k Bradley Tusk has long been known in political circles. He was once deputy governor of Illinois, working for the now-incarcerated former governor Rod Blagojevich. He also worked for Michael Bloomberg during one of his tenures as mayor of New York City and in 2009 ran Bloomberg’s successful, third re-election campaign. In fact, thanks to a generous bonus check from Bloomberg, Tusk was… Read More

H-1B and you and me

immigration Let’s talk about something non-awful that Donald Trump has done. (Shouldn’t take long, right? Ba-dum-bump-wince.) Specifically, let’s talk about the draft executive order floating around which calls for H-1B visas to be allotted not by lottery, as they are today, but by auction, so that only highly-paid jobs are filled by H-1B holders. Read More

Gillmor Gang: Kakitocracy

Gillmor Gang Artcard The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, February 10, 2017. Plus the latest G3 (below) with Halley Suitt Tucker, Elisa Camahort Page, Denise Howell, Mary Hodder, and Tina Chase Gillmor. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @kteare, @fradice Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor Liner Notes Live chat stream The Gillmor Gang… Read More

Statsbot helps businesses pull their data into Slack

Statsbot Statsbot is giving companies a new way to look at their data — in their chatrooms on Slack.
Co-founder and CEO Artyom Keydunov said that the product was inspired by his previous work leading a remote engineering team, when he realized that it would be “a good idea to bring data from Google Analytics or Mixpanel to the place where all collaboration happens — to Slack.&#8221… Read More

Data shows a downward demographic spiral for Republicans

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 10:  Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to be the U.S. attorney general January 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. Sessions was one of the first members of Congress to endorse and support President-elect Donald Trump, who nominated him for Attorney General.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) It’s clear Republicans hitched their wagon to a demographic they have successfully exploited at historic levels the last couple of decades. Yet in doing that they’ve still lost six of the last seven popular votes, and as the data shows they’ve now pretty much run out of white evangelicals to add to the mix. Read More

UK’s Hellocar secures £1M to to disrupt UK car buying market

dsc_1205 Hellocar, a new car buying website out of the UK, has secured a £1m investment round. The round was led by JamJar Investments, the Innocent Drinks founders’ venture capital fund, and Alex Chesterman, founder and CEO of Zoopla Property Group. Henry Lane Fox, part of the founding team behind lastminute.com and CEO of Founders Factory, will join the Hellocar board as a Director. The… Read More