Category: Tech news

 The Garage — Microsoft’s home to experimental projects like smart news apps, Android launchers, productivity add-ons, smartphone keyboards and yes, even that app that tells you what sort of dog you look like — is expanding to three new locations, including Cambridge, Massachusetts, India and China. In total, there are seven Garage locations now open or under construction.… Read More

CES 2017 day two, Campbell Brown to help Facebook News Publishers, DJI opens its wallet for Hasselblad, and Indiegogo goes equity and goods. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 16, 2016. This was the last recording of the Gillmor Gang in 2016, and the final minutes included a sharp exchange between Robert Scoble and myself. Subsequently Robert decided to stop appearing on the show. I wish him well and thank him for his participation over… Read More

 As a result of Apple’s performance based executive compensation packages, CEO Tim Cook and other leaders within the company will be taking pay cuts. Apple missed internal revenue and operating income targets for 2016 by 3.7 and 0.5 percent respectively, resulting in a 15 percent cut for the CEO. Apple is reporting annual sales of $215.6 billion and operating income of $60 billion for… Read More

 Polaroid had a hit on its hands with the Snap. The device marked the perfect marriage between an iconic brand and new technologies, re-developing the once novel phenomenon of instant film for an early 21 century millennial crowd. According to a rep I spoke with, the brand can’t keep the thing on the shelves. Unveiled this week at CES, the Pop is essentially a scaled up version of… Read More

 At CES on Friday, Baidu announced a partnership with Chinese passenger vehicle maker BAIC Motor, to work together on a developing smart car tech, and Level 3 autonomous driving in particular. Vehicles resulting from this partnership with Level 3 autonomy will be entering road tests by the end of 2017, Baidu says. Level 3 autonomy still requires human drives to be present, but less intervention… Read More

 The adult entertainment industry has long been a silent driver of new technologies, from ISPs to graphics cards. With virtual reality, many see porn as one of the more obvious use cases that could lead to heavy headset adoption early on. Today, Pornhub released data that shows some of the early success the site has had since introducing a VR porn section in April of 2016. Read More

 The Think & Learn SmartCycle is already getting a mixed reaction. In the five or so minutes I stood in front of Fisher-Price’s booth at tonight’s CES kickoff event, reactions ranged from excited to confused to downright disappointed in the human race. And indeed, it’s easy to see why someone might complain about the necessity of such a device, but here we are. Read More

 Following an extremely contentious election cycle, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will label election systems in the U.S. as “critical infrastructure.” The new categorization would allow election systems to “receive prioritized cybersecurity assistance” from DHS, although this would only be by request of a state or local government. In a press release,… Read More

 What happens when you mix two software dudes, a little kid, and a light switch? You get the Knocki.
The Knocki is a clever little device that connects to a wall or under a table. You can tap the surface to trigger events – turning on a light, muting speakers, etc. – and it is surprisingly small and easily-hidden.
The founders are Ohad Nezer and Jake Boshernitzan, both of Houston… Read More

 The connected hardware space has undoubtedly gone through a renaissance over the last four years, with VCs nearly tripling their funding between 2012 and 2016. We gleaned some new data from Pitchbook around venture funding in IoT to get a quantitative understanding of whether investment in the space is continuing to grow or flattening out. Here’s what we learned. Read More

 There’s some inherent irony in the Mercury. The first BlackBerry device produced solely under the TCL umbrella is far more instantly recognizable as a BlackBerry device than any of the OEM DTEK products the two companies produced as a pair. The phone is still in a sort of pre-announcement stage. TCL was apparently initially planning to wait for MWC in a month and a half to debut the… Read More

 Meet Blitab, an Android tablet combined with a smart Braille surface. It’s one of the most affordable Braille devices out there and could change the way visually impaired people use computing devices. The company is participating in TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at CES.
The devices for this niche market are really disappointing. There are specialized devices called Braille… Read More

 Very few people can move financial markets with their tweets, but like it or not, President-elect Donald Trump is one of them. And while you can’t do anything to prevent the madness, you can keep up with it using a new tool from Trigger Finance. 
Originally a class project at Cornell Tech, Trigger makes it easy for users to set up real-time alerts when news drops about their stocks. Read More

 Construction sites can be dangerous places. And while recent advancements in safety technology have done a lot to help protect workers, there hasn’t been as much focus on protecting the site itself from things like fire, water and mold damage. Any of these three risks can cost construction companies (or insurance companies) millions of dollars in damages, and are the biggest causes… Read More