Category: Tech news

You know those gift cards you see at the checkout counter in various stores? Well, it’s a kind’ve crazy business. Most people, when given gift cards, forget to spend them or that there’s a use-by date. And yet they remain popular, with so many people buying gift cards and vouchers instead of presents. As a result, most of the players make money from non-redemption. This is… Read More

 Today’s marketing industry is a long way from achieving its end-game of a system that delivers the perfect creative through the best medium at the optimal moment to each individual audience member. To move toward that vision, the industry is evolving from an impression-centric paradigm to a user-centric paradigm. Read More

 Reddit has had a pretty bizarre last few days in Russia. The entire site was blacklisted and banned yesterday for a number of users in Russia following a clear threat made by Russia’s FCC, the Roskomnadzor, to remove a thread about growing psychedelic mushrooms that had been posted on the site. Roskomnadzor’s post on Vkontakte (basically the Russian Facebook) read: Those… Read More

 Zero-fee, stock-trading app Robinhood is now on Android. The app launched on iOS late last year and has grown to “hundreds of thousands of customers” and made over $1 billion in trades on the platform, according to the startup. Read More

Tim Kendall’s new job is to make sure Pinterest’s partners are finding new ways to make money off one of the most engaging platforms on the Internet. He’s been plenty busy since he got started, including launching Buyable Pins. We sat down with him to find out a little bit more about the company’s commerce plans. Read More

 Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein tweeted this morning that he’d found what looked like a used condom in a freshly cleaned bag of baby clothes from laundry startup Washio.
“Hi @washioapp,” wrote Klein, “Thanks for the bonus gift returned with my baby’s clothes, but she’s already protected by her car seat.” Read More

 When it comes to raising money in the U.S., corporate venture capital is seemingly synonymous with “Plan C.” If you can’t raise money from top-tier firms, you move on to Plan B, second-tier firms. If that fails, Plan C is corporate. There are exceptions, but corporate does tend to be the last resort: The place you go when your company has been shopped, or your valuation is… Read More

 Apple just released a new diversity report with data about the race, gender and ethnic makeup of the company. Even though the company is still mostly white (54 percent) in the U.S., it’s promising to see that, of Apple’s hires in the last year, 11 percent have been black, 13 percent have been Hispanic and 19 percent have been Asian. Worldwide, Apple’s workforce is still… Read More

 Welcome to INNOVATE2016, a weekly interview series focusing on how new technology and innovation is influencing the upcoming Presidential election. According to our first guest the 2016 election is likely to be determined by social media and new digital technologies. Read More

 It’s time. Tickets to the Disrupt SF 2015 Hackathon are now available, and you can get in on the action by snagging a ticket here. The event takes place September 19 and 20 at the historic Pier 70 in San Francisco, and you’re going to want to be there. The Hackathon kicks off Saturday at 12:30 p.m. PT with networking and the forming of the Hackathon teams. On Sunday, after a… Read More

 During an enterprisey event at Google SF today, the company announced a brand new Chromebook for enterprise, built by Dell. The Google for Work team has been tailoring all of Google’s consumer software products for enterprise use. That means security, security and more security. Yes, to get computers blessed by a huge corporation, those things have to be pretty bulletproof. To get its… Read More

 Parse, the backend platform for apps Facebook acquired back in 2013, today announced that it will open source all of its software development kits (SDKs). The Parse SDKs for iOS, Android and OS X are available on GitHub now, and the service’s other SDKs for the likes of Windows Phone, JavaScript, Xamarin and React will follow soon. Read More

 Apple released an official iOS update (8.4.1) to users today, aiming to fix a number of bugs that have been plaguing those using Apple’s new music service. The update aims to reduce the general bugginess and improve performance of Apple Music and Beats 1, especially addressing an issue that prevented some users from accessing their iCloud Music Library.
The iOS update lists… Read More

 In a prospectus filed today by the company, Tesla announced the intention to sell up to 2,100,000 shares of common stock. Underwriters will also receive a 30-day option to purchase up to 315,000 additional shares. Using yesterday’s closing price of $283.17 per share, the company expects net proceeds from the offering to be around $492.6 million, or $566.5 million if the underwriters… Read More

 Massdrop is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The company focuses on what it calls “community-driven commerce.” It allows people who are interested in things like high-quality audio, men’s fashion and quilting (yes, those are all actual Massdrop communities) to connect with other enthusiasts, discuss products, make purchases with group discounts… Read More