Category: Tech news

 NowThis Media, which covers the news with videos that are usually around 15 or 30 seconds long, is announcing that it has raised $6 million in Series C funding. NowThis was founded by Kenneth Lerer (chairman at BuzzFeed and co-founder of the Huffington Post) and Eric Hippeau (former CEO of the Huffington Post), with backing from their firm Lerer Hippeau Ventures. The startup launched in 2012,… Read More

 Zenefits is taking the Utah Insurance Department ruling to stop offering free services to task. Utah Insurance Commissioner Todd Kiser issued a ruling last month that would ban Zenefits from giving away its cloud-based HR software for free, claiming this was a violation of Utah law and unfair to local insurance brokers. Zenefits offers the management of hiring, firing, and all the… Read More

 A popular service like Gmail inevitably becomes a target for hackers. Over the years, Google has made quite a few security improvements, such as requiring HTTPS connections to prevent others from getting access to your email. Today the company announced that it has implemented support for Content Security Policy (CSP) to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and malevolent browser plug-ins… Read More

 Ebay’s testing of “last-mile” delivery hasn’t been totally shelved, it seems. The company, distancing itself from its earlier eBay Now initiative, announced today that it’s expanding its eBay Local pilot program in Brooklyn with the addition of 80 small businesses that will offer scheduled and same-day delivery, as well as in-store pickup to area customers. Read More

 We’re not ace photographers, but we all take photos. Most could use a little help with light and shadow. So rather than making you manually filter them, Facebook tells me it will now auto-enhance newly uploaded photos starting today on iOS and soon on Android. You’ll be able to adjust a slider to control just how enhanced you want the light, shadow, and clarity, or revert back to… Read More

 The generational shift occurring as millennials come of age and baby boomers just keep aging has massive implications for both technology and society.
As mobile devices become magic wands for marketplaces, matching supply and demand and making goods and services more accessible than ever before, we’re experiencing an “uberfication” of the economy. Read More

 Bitcoin spiked to north of $1,000 in late 2013, before starting a long decline in the current year. After some optimistic fluctuation, it has landed in a mid-$300 trading range that the virtual currency can’t seem to shake.
Gone, for now it seems, are the go-go days of bitcoin heading straight north. Read More

 Apple has stopped selling its hardware online in Russia, owing to the currently volatile state of the Ruble, the country’s official currency. In a statement provided to Bloomberg, the company said that it’s taking things offline while it goes through the process of evaluating its pricing, and apologized to customers put out by the site being taken down. Apple’s decision to… Read More

 Mattermark, the business intelligence site that pivoted out of YC-backed curation site Referly, is today announcing that it has raised a round of $6.5 million, funding that the startup will use the funding to build out its ambition to be a “B2B Google.” Read More

 Today Instagram has added five new filters for still images, which is the first time they’ve done such a thing in two years. The most recent filters before this, which seems odd considering they’ve been there longer than most of Instagrams users have actually been on the app, were Willow and Mayfair. Just like you’d expect, each of the new filters has a slightly odd-sounding… Read More

 A newer competitor in the online consignment space, Swap.com, has raised $4 million in Series A funding for its e-commerce shop where parents can buy secondhand kids’ clothing, gear, books, toys, games and more. Though similar in some respects to competitors like thredUP.com, which also began by focusing on the kids’ clothing resale market, Swap.com differentiates itself by not… Read More

 A jury has found in favor of Apple in a lawsuit brought against it for DRM practices employed in iTunes, which claimed it was in violation of U.S. antitrust regulations owing to decisions it made regarding software updates. The case essentially alleged that iTunes updates, including 4.7, 7.0 and 7.4 were created strictly to introduce FairPlay updates to block competing services from offering… Read More

 Anonymous is attacking Swedish government servers, including police services, in retaliation for the shutdown of the The Pirate Bay, a bit torrent aggregator. The attacks, mostly denial-of-service efforts, have been most recently aimed at the Swedish police. The main site, polisen.se, is currently live.

Target: http://t.co/7n6zorlkFH IP… Read More

 Rapportive users have not been happy about the email plug-in’s performance and changes following its acquisition by LinkedIn. Instead of rich contact info and tools for following and friending email contacts on a variety of social networks, LinkedIn removed much of the functionality that drew users to it in the first place. In the wake of these changes, a number of competitors have… Read More

 Pebble’s upcoming Android software release will introduce support for directly replying to messages and performing other actions right from the watch based on inbound notifications. The 2.3 software update effectively makes Pebble compatible with apps that have built-in support for Android Wear notifications, giving them a way to benefit from the explosion of app development interest… Read More