Category: Tech news

 If you were a fan of news startup Circa, you might remember that shortly before it shut down this summer, it was reportedly looking for a buyer and in talks with The Daily Dot. Well, it looks like those talks led somewhere — but not to an acquisition. Daily Dot co-founder Josh Jones-Dilworth said his company has hired “the core of the Circa tech team,” including co-founder… Read More

 My kitchen opens up to my family room, where right smack in the middle sits “Alexa,” an Amazon Echo device. It feels strange to call Alexa a device, because she has been chatting with my family and is building out her personality. As Amazon applies machine learning, Alexa will learn and develop her personality to fit in my home different from yours. Read More

 Turns out the Ballmer Peak is real. Shares in Twitter spiked 4.85 percent today, closing at $31.15 per share. Trading above the $30 mark is an important psychological threshold for Twitter. Put another way, as $40 is to Microsoft, $30 is to Twitter. What happened? Former Microsoft CEO and current eccentric sports fan Steve Ballmer announced that he has acquired a 4 percent minority stake in… Read More

 In April of this year, Amazon filed suit against the operators of websites that offered Amazon sellers the ability to purchase fake, four and five-star reviews of their products. Most of those websites have now been closed, and Amazon took action against the sellers involved. Now Amazon is continuing its crackdown on fake reviews by going after individuals who provide these sort of fake… Read More

 After a period of being something akin to sold out, pre-orders are back online for Microsoft’s new Surface Book laptop-hybrid, but delays are the name of the game. It seems essentially clear at the moment that Microsoft either underestimated demand for the device, or simply couldn’t make more before it hit the unveil button. The Surface Book starts at $1,499, and has… Read More

 Alibaba’s proposed $3.5 billion buy out of Youku Tudou, a deal that would take the New York Stock Exchange-listed Chinese video site private if accepted, is mainly about advertising with e-commerce sprinkled in, company executives explained today. Read More

 Happy Friday, dear readers! This week, we come bearing good tidings of new Apple products, including brand new iMacs and a new trackpad! The new iMacs have Ultra HD screens, so you can see everything. Meanwhile, the $129 Trackpad brings Force Touch to a computer near you. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns,… Read More

 Google Play, the company’s storefront selling apps, games, movies, books, and more, is getting a big makeover. Screenshots showing a revamped mobile interface offering improved navigation, engaging animations, and simpler way to switch between apps and entertainment offerings, surfaced online this week via the online profile of a Google employee. It was initially unclear why a Googler… Read More

 None of the three cofounders of Vine are still working on Twitter’s video-sharing app. Rus Yusopov, the last man standing, as it were, was one of the 300+ employees who was laid off in Twitter restructuring that went down earlier this week. The news was first reported by BuzzFeed, which confirmed Yusopov’s departure with a company spokesperson. Vine was founded by Colin Kroll,… Read More

 BuzzFeed isn’t the only global news heavyweight entering Japan. The BBC, the UK’s national news organization, this week launched a Japanese site, which becomes its first dedicated non-English news website and helps extend its fledgling global advertising network. Read More

 Bobby Goodlatte’s childhood involved a non-stop political campaign — a whirlwind of pancake breakfasts, hand-shaking and kissing babies. That’s because his father, Bob Goodlatte, has served in U.S. Congress for nearly all of his life. That gave him years of exposure to how politics and governance actually works. “I actually think that the mechanics of running… Read More

 Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer now owns not only the Los Angeles Clippers, but a big chunk of Twitter as well.
Ballmer earlier this morning disclosed that he owned 4% of Twitter in a Tweet. His share purchases apparently came over the course of the past few months. At Twitter’s current valuation of $20.76 billion, that stake is worth around $830 million.

Good job… Read More

 A majority of iOS device owners have upgraded to Apple’s recently released mobile operating system, iOS 9, according to a new third-party report which pegs iOS 9 adoption at 55 percent. That’s a slight climb from the 50 percent adoption rate Apple officially announced last month, less than a week after the software had been released, and the 12 percent adoption rate seen within… Read More

 It would appear that Jay Z, rap legend and Tidal music screaming service owner, has been hanging out with the folks over at Samsung. According to a report from Variety, Jay Z had a meeting in Samsung’s Silicon Valley office on Wednesday with a number of executives, including Daren Tsui, Samsung’s SVP of content and services. Of course, a meeting does not an acquisition make.… Read More

 Venture capitalists have funneled more than $12 billion into the sharing economy, more than twice what was invested in social networking startups like Facebook and Twitter, according to a 2015 Deloitte report. Because of this, it’s more important than ever to understand the key factors that go into building an enduring business vs. a flash-in-the-pan that can’t withstand market… Read More