Category: Tech news

 It’s been a few weeks since we’ve heard much about Project Ara, Google’s efforts to build a phone out of components that can be swapped out, piece-by-piece. Google showed off the device a bit back at I/O — alas, things got a bit… crashy during the presentation. In a new video released today, the Phonebloks team shows the Ara prototype in its most recent form… Read More

 In a virtual press conference today, MCX‘s CEO Dekkers Davidson said “We’re agnostic about technology. We started with QR code-based technology that allows us to go to market broadly. If we need, we can pivot to NFC.” That means if retailers strongly prefer the NFC system used by Apple Pay to MCX’s mobile payment app CurrentC’s QR code system, CurrentC… Read More

 If you’ve listened to public radio at all in the past decade you’ll recognize the voice of Alex Blumberg. Part of the adenoidal-voice-amazing-stories class of broadcasters, Blumberg worked on This American Life and the amazing Planet Money where he explained complex topics in succinct ways. Now he’s an entrepreneur trying to build his own podcasting empire by changing the… Read More

 Comcast has agreed to a $50 million settlement to a case regarding customers in the Philadelphia area. The lawsuit was filed more than a decade ago. Comcast continues to deny the allegations. The original case failed before the Supreme Court, leading to a reduction in its scale. The $50 million includes a $16.7 million cash amount, and $33.3 million in “Settlement Credits” that… Read More

 Twitter and IBM announced a significant partnership today that will involve Twitter sharing its data with IBM for integration into IBM’s enterprise solutions, including the Watson cloud platform. The deal means IBM will gain access to the Twitter “firehose,” allowing businesses to incorporate insights gained from the social network into their decision-making… Read More

 Google is rolling out an update to its “Google My Business” mobile application designed to make it easier for business owners to view and respond to customer reviews … and, of course, complaints. Where previously the app was a way for businesses to quickly update their information, post to Google+ and track how visible their business is across Google sites, with these new… Read More

 Merchants don’t like credit cards. The fees associated are onerous and wildly convoluted. For example, I challenge you to find a single source of information one the Internet regarding these fees that isn’t a spam-laden lead generation engine. Merchants take these lumps as the cost of doing business. That’s why MCX and its associated system, CurrentC, exists. And, like… Read More

 BlackBerry is still rolling and today CEO John Chen announced the upcoming BlackBerry Classic, which seems to be, well, a classic BlackBerry. Details like screen size and battery life were not revealed. All you need to know is that the Classic will have a BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard. BlackBerry has never truly given up on phones with physical keyboards. Released in April of 2013, the Q10 was… Read More

 Coinbase, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed Bitcoin wallet and merchant processing platform with just shy of 2 million wallets, is jumping on a big trend in security for holding the crypto-currency. They’re adding multi-signature technology to their vault product, which is designed with long-term, higher net worth holders of Bitcoin in mind. Multi-signature usually means that in order… Read More

 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donating $500,000. John and Ann Doerr are also pitching in $500K, and Code.org has also informed TechCrunch that serial entrepreneur Rich Barton is making a donation of $25K. Read More

The Iro from Rachio is a $250 box you install to control your home’s sprinkler system. You can set up and tweak complex lawn irrigation schemes via a mobile app that runs on your phone.

The post App Irrigation appeared first on WIRED.

 Both chemist and “semi-recreational” codemonkey, Isaac Yonemoto is running a crowdfunding campaign called Project Marilyn to create open sourced, patent-free cancer drugs. Yonemoto proposes a $75,000 stretch goal to fund an experiment he hopes will prove we can use a compound sequenced from microscopic bug cultures to treat cancer. It’s a plan that could liberate… Read More

 Anonymous messaging app Whisper has suspended its editor-in-chief Neetzan Zimmerman and other staff members after Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller wrote a letter summoning Whisper execs to an in-person meeting to discuss the apps privacy practices. “While Whisper provides users a unique social experience, the allegations in recent media accounts are serious and users… Read More

 I’m finally getting over my post-Disrupt Europe jet lag, and I guess that means the conference is old news. But before we leave it completely in the rearview, I wanted to highlight a couple of backstage interviews that you might have missed if you weren’t watching the livestream — specifically, my conversations with Fab’s Jason Goldberg and Mind Candy’s Michael… Read More

 I am, as you may know, a sucker for watches that use older display technologies (see also Nixie tubes). For example, this cool watch by freelance engineer John De Cristofaro uses a vacuum fluorescent display tube, an early form of digital display that cast a bright blue light and was first used in 1980s-era electronics. They will be familiar to folks who owned Subarus with digital displays… Read More