Category: Tech news

 Apple’s plans for its first original TV show don’t make it sound like a swing-for-the-fences, House of Cards-style project. Instead, it’s working on an unscripted TV series about apps and app developers.
There are some big names attached, though, including musician Will.i.am and TV executives Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens. (Silverman was previously co-chairman at NBC… Read More

 Supersonic planes, food harvesting robots and instant HIV diagnosis were some of the ideas that wowed us on Demo Day 2 for Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch. We queried investors and TechCrunch’s writers to come up with our top 8 picks from all 59 startups that presented. Check out our coverage of the 60 YC startups from Tuesday, plus our 7 favorites. Additional reporting by Megan… Read More

 Martin Hellman, Stanford Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, was one of those awarded this year’s Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery. Named for computer science pioneer Alan Turing, the award is widely regarded as the highest distinction in Computer Science. Hellman and then-Stanford researcher Whitfield Diffie won the award for their fundamental… Read More

 When you think about the fastest growing areas for startup investments, you probably don’t think about classified ads. More likely, your mind wanders to music apps, e-commerce or social platforms. It’s understandable; after all, the classified ad industry has barely innovated since Craigslist came to the scene. Read More

 Two visual marketing startups are teaming up — Olapic is announcing that it has acquired Piqora.
Both companies promise to help businesses promote themselves through user-generated photos, but Olapic co-founder and CEO Pau Sabria said his company’s strength has been on Instagram (which was its initial focus), while Piqora’s has been on Pinterest (ditto). So he sees the… Read More

 People often misunderstand Y Combinator’s accelerator, with its broad range of startups that sometimes pivot before launch. That’s in part because YC’s president and spokesperson Sam Altman is too busy to tell its stories over and over, and he’s more of a techie type than a polished press liaison.
So today, Altman handed the spokesperson reins to Justin Kan, one of… Read More

 New roads (rather than new walls) are, therefore, the key to reinventing the American economy. Read More

 Are you ready for a big fight over Yahoo’s control? Activist investor Starboard Value LP is really unhappy about Yahoo’s current state and wants everyone to know about it. In an open letter to shareholders, the activist hedge fund is saying that many things are broken at Yahoo right now and the investment firm could fix everything by taking over the company’s entire board. Read More

 Launched this week, London-based startup Trax & Wax is the first vinyl subscription service focused on sub-genres within dance music. It works with the most prominent distributors of dance music including Rush Hour, Clone, Syncrophone and Word & Sound to curate a personalized monthly “box” of 12″ records. Read More

 French startup Mapstr is a nifty bookmarking apps, but for your favorite places. It lets you keep track of restaurants, bars, shops or your friends’ homes. With today’s update, you can now get walking, driving and public transport directions with integrations with Google Maps, Uber and Citymapper. And this could make the app a bit more useful. Until today, Mapstr was a great way to… Read More

 As promised, Hulu has entered the world of VR. The streaming service today announced the launch of an app designed for Samsung’s Gear VR powered by Oculus. Now available on the Gear VR Oculus Store, the new app is the first of what the company says will be several VR apps for different platforms, currently in the works. In addition to providing access to Hulu’s 2D content library… Read More

 A year after blatantly copying Timehop, Facebook’s nostalgia feature is proving how successful big platforms can be when they rip off smaller products. Each day 60 million people visit On This Day, and 155 million have subscribed to its notifications that show your photos, status, updates, and wall posts from this date in years past. Facebook released the data on the one-year anniversary… Read More

 In the world of gaming accessories, “budget-friendly” is not a word frequently used. Naturally, one of the biggest players industry, Razer, aims to change that with the Blackwidow X. The newest set of keyboards added to their existing lineup, the Blackwidow X has changes made not only to improve simplicity, but to promote more competitive (e.g. budget-friendly) pricing for… Read More

 In case there was any doubt that messaging apps were the future of communication in the mobile-first era, a new study released this morning puts some solid numbers behind their traction – and their increasing dominance over email, among today’s youngest users. According to a report from App Annie, email is effectively dying among this crowd. Those aged 13 to 24 now spend more than… Read More

 Foursquare has just launched Swarm 4.0, complete with brand new profile pages, updated search capabilities, full-screen photos and a weekly Swarm update from your friends. The most important update to the app comes by way of new individual user profiles. These profiles show a clickable map of all the places you’ve ever been right at the top, followed by basic information like number… Read More