Category: Tech news

 If you’re looking to build your own Christmas tree out of plastic this year, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve collected my five favorite 3D printers that you should be able to order and receive before or on Christmas. While it might be tough to get one or two of these on such short notice if the ones you love want to do some 3D printing, you can do no better than these five. Read More

 It’s no secret, we love startups. And yet, finding the perfect gift for a startup lover is challenging. The great thing is that some of our favorite startups are now making cool hardware products. This year, instead of buying yet another Apple gadget, look no further, we’ve rounded up eleven gifts. These aren’t Kickstarter campaigns. All these gifts are shipping today. Need… Read More

 Microsoft announced today that it has purchased Metanautix, a big-data focused startup that came out of stealth in 2014. The company was backed by $7 million in capital, including cash from well-known venture firm Sequoia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to TechCrunch’s prior coverage of Metanautix, the company’s external funding came in majority at the time of… Read More

 The robots at RE^2 robotics are tricksy devils. In this video a pair of robot manipulators carefully cut out a snowflake-shaped piece of paper with a pair of regular scissors – a feat that, if truly assessed in the context of future technology, should give us pause.
Sure this robot is wishing us a happy winter solstice with its jolly decoration but what happens when these arms become… Read More

 Since the debut of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which introduced support for a new, animated type of photo called Live Photos, a number of apps have launched to help iPhone owners do more with those moving images, including turning them into GIFs, save storage space by deleting the Live Photos and more. Now one of the first movers in this space, Lively, has rolled out a couple of notable… Read More

 This week, tech companies geared up for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere with a bunch of fun Easter eggs like this phonesaber from Google, WhatsApp was ordered to shut down in Brazil, and we got more information about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. These are our best stories of the week. Read More

 The past decade has rendered the music industry unrecognizable. Digital music is king and songs are purchased (and created) in the cloud. Faster computer processing and affordable hardware allow professional recording tools to be available to all. Artificial intelligence has produced albums, scored films, and generated mood music in games. So where does a historic recording studio like Abbey… Read More

 Last summer, we told you about a new competition sponsored by Pejman Mar Ventures, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca., venture firm with close ties to Stanford and a growing interest in technologies coming out of the University of California, Berkeley. Today, the firm is announcing that the winner of that competition. Evidently, it couldn’t resist creating two new award categories,… Read More

 Five years ago Whitney Bouck joined Box from EMC Documentum to teach them a thing or two about the enterprise. Today she announced she was leaving the company. Her last day at Box is today. In an interview with FierceContentManagement right after she joined the company, she likened the experience at Box with her early days at enterprise content management vendor Documentum.… Read More

 The first millennial CEO is leading the end of “two-pocket thinking” Read More

 Target may launch its own mobile wallet as soon as next year, according to a report out this morning from Reuters, citing unnamed sources. The move would put the fourth-largest U.S. retailer in direct competition with other payment platforms, including Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, for example. It also follows a similar move from Walmart involving the introduction of its own… Read More

 Andreessen Horowitz partner and longtime mobile analyst Benedict Evans met with reporters in San Francisco yesterday morning to discuss the 16 mobile trends that he thinks will be the most worth watching in the New Year.
Since Evans has a long history of producing sharp analysis, we thought we’d share his observations with you. You can also listen to a related podcast here. Read More

 Quantum computing is moving from theory and experimentation into engineering and applications. But now that quantum computing is going mainstream, it is incumbent on businesses and governments to understand its potential, for universities to beef up their teaching programs in quantum computing and related subjects and for students to become aware of promising new career paths. Read More

 Facebook this year continued to hold the number one position as the top app installed on U.S. smartphones based on the average number of unique users, according to a new report out this week from Nielsen, but its mobile messaging application clocked in as the fastest-growing app of 2015. Having foreseen the shift from more public social networking to private communications, Facebook… Read More

 It’s impossible to escape Star Wars. And that’s great! What follows are some of the best Star Wars-themed gifts available right now. From droids, to LEGO kits, to plush toys, this list has a bit of everything. If nothing else, no one has ever turned down a Star Wars t-shirt. Read More