Category: Tech news

 You were a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group for many years but recently left to found Pioneer Square Labs. You employ a different model for building startups i.e. it is neither a venture capital firm nor an accelerator. How is this new model different or better? The traditional way of starting a company will remain the most common, which is you have an idea and bootstrap it or… Read More

 Recently, Google launched a video calling tool (yes, another one). Google Hangouts has been sidelined to Enterprise, and Google Duo is supposed to be the next big thing in video calling. So now we have Skype from Microsoft, Facetime from Apple, and Google with Duo. Each big company has its own equivalent service, each stuck in its own bubble. These services may be great, but they… Read More

 There are three types of science fiction (in my view): crap, serialized crap and hard-science science fiction. The last type contains a wealth of visions of the future, many of which we enjoy today, and is referenced in the names of, or has influenced, many tech startups and world-class entrepreneurs. Read More

 The mobile security market is taking off due to high-profile hackings. Is there such a thing as an unhackable phone? Consider this: The smartphone in your pocket is 10 times more powerful than the fastest supercomputers of just 20 years ago. The complexity is mind-boggling — and so are all the security vulnerabilities. Anyone claiming to sell an “unhackable phone” is… Read More

 Samsung’s media arm continues code red damage control in the wake of the latest report surrounding a faulty Galaxy Note 7. The incident, which occurred on a Southwest flight earlier this week, further complicates the matters for several reasons beyond the already troubling fact that it played out on a plane – which, thankfully, was still at the gate. The device involved in the… Read More

 Salesforce has been on a shopping spree this year, spending in the neighborhood of $5-6 billion on 10 companies. That’s why it was interesting to hear company president, vice chairman and COO, Keith Block talk about what they look for in an acquisition target at a press conference at Dreamforce this week. This is particularly true in the context of rumors that Salesforce was interested… Read More

 Since the 1999 launch of Napster’s music-sharing platform, the music industry has been in near-constant turmoil, with dipping revenues, lack of transparency, piracy problems and feuds over the fair distribution of dividends. The blockchain has drawn the attention of investors and professionals in different industries, and is now showing promising signs to change the music industry. Read More

 Oh, Yahoo. We’re not just mad at you. We’re also really, really disappointed. First it took you two years to figure out that you were hacked by a nation-state. Then you allowed another nation-state — the US government — to scan all of your user’s emails … using a buggy Linux kernel module … without ever telling your security team. Seriously, Yahoo? Read More

 The workforce of the 21st century has been changing for years.  Government, only recently perceiving the movement from a traditional workforce to an independent contractor model, is stifling innovation and hurting workers in the process. From Boston to Seattle, we are seeing a myriad of impulsive efforts to regulate everything from how an individual may use their vehicle to whom they allow… Read More

Verizon wants a $1 billion discount on the Yahoo deal, Facebook launches a standalone Events app, Poland is testing some roads that glow blue at night for cyclists, carriers are accepting Note 7 replacement trade-ins and Maserati is working on an electric vehicle. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 SoundCloud’s big differentiator is its offering of unofficial, user-uploaded content that the major labels don’t release and that isn’t on Spotify or Apple Music. Or at least they weren’t. The first unofficial single-track remixes just went live on Spotify and Apple Music thanks to their partnerships with music rights management service Dubset. Apple struck a deal… Read More

 Nearly a month after the on-demand laundry service Washio shut its doors, its assets have been starched, pressed and folded into the operations of one of its main competitors — Rinse. For a while, competition for on-demand laundering seemed to be a regional game, with both Rinse and Washio vying for territory along the West Coast and, eventually, nationally. On the East Coast, startups… Read More

 Acquisitions are often celebrated in the press. But academic research suggests that 70 percent to 90 percent of mergers don’t succeed, owing to a wide variety of factors. Buyers overvalue the synergies they’ll derive, or they underestimate the impact of the associated costs, or they rely too heavily on assumptions about where a market is heading.
Of course, another reason… Read More

 As the saying goes, “all politics is local.” And now, so is hacking. Cyber attacks popularized on the silver screen are now occurring in every aspect of our life. Our election system is not immune from this new reality. Read More

 Kiosked, a company that dynamically inserts ads into a publisher’s content, has a new CEO — co-founder Antti Pasila. Pasila, who previously served as the company’s chief strategy officer, said his appointment is part of a broader shift: “The key thing is, we’re focusing our resources on the supply side.” In other words, while there are no plans to get rid… Read More