Category: Tech news

 Snaptee, an app that lets users turn their smartphone photos into T-shirt designs, has raised an additional $750,000 from new investors SXE Ventures, Nest, Groupon Hong Kong co-founder Danny Yeung, and Joel Neoh, the CEO of Groupon Taiwan and Groupon Malaysia. The latest funding brings the total Snaptee has raised so far to $1.95 million. Read More

 This morning at its San Francisco offices, Google announced a rebrand of its enterprise products, renaming the set of tools and productivity services ‘Google for Work.’ The new nomenclature will stretch across the company’s various business tools, with each service picking up a ‘for Work’ appendage — Google now vends Drive for Work, Search for Work, and… Read More

 It’s rare to meet a comedy genius at a Tee Jaye’s Country Place in Columbus, Ohio, but that’s just what I did when I sat down for breakfast with Zack Danger Brown, the guy who blew up the Internet a few weeks ago with his exciting potato salad Kickstarter.
Brown has rocketed to fortune and glory thanks to his gag and is now (potentially) going to give a talk at SXSW and is… Read More

 Google Forms, the service in Google’s online office suite that helps users collaboratively create web-based forms which can be shared with others, is finally getting a professional makeover thanks to the addition of themes. The company announced the new, custom themes today, which users are able to further edit by selecting their own fonts and colors, choosing a background, as well as… Read More

 Apartment listing startup Zumper has spent the last several years building apps to help connect brokers and property managers with prospective tenants and vice versa. Today it’s launching a new application called Zapp that will simplify the process of not just finding, but also applying for, their next apartment. Read More

 A company called Tocomail earlier this year launched a mobile application designed to be kids’ first email service, built with the parental controls and protections such an app would require, while allowing kids to write simple messages and send drawings to pre-approved family and friends. Now Tocomail is targeting a slightly older crowd with the debut of another app called Tocomail… Read More

 Intel CEO Brian Krzanich foresees a day when a wearable is no longer seen a one-size-fits-all device that you put on your wrist. That day could be coming sooner rather than later, as Intel-based wearable products will likely be shown off in the coming weeks at NY Fashion Week. Read More

 One of the brilliant things about tech leaders and pundits in Silicon Valley is their true passion for entrepreneurship and their belief in the power of the human spirit and intellect. Surrounded by the sight of so many motivated and talented founders in the Valley itself, they assume that this optimistic sensibility can override nearly any obstacle for a dedicated entrepreneur. Read More

In honor of back to school we’re talking to creatives, VCs, and, in this case, entrepreneurs about what it takes to succeed. Walter Duncan is a really nice guy and dedicated “teacherpreneur” who has created a test-taking app. His start-up has taken in hundreds of thousands in funding and the accolades from teachers are never-ending. We asked him what it took to be a… Read More

 As we enter the second half of 2014, it would be fair to say that big data has gone mainstream, attracting coffee table books, multiple industry landscapes, consumer applications, and large amounts of funding. Having seen many technology cycles during our 45 years in venture capital including the birth of the PC era, the transition to client-server computing, then Web-based computing, to… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. This one seems more like an AA meeting for Apple addiction, as the Gang stumbles around pretending to be interested in Twitter tinkering with the Favorites model while just killing time until September 9. The reason we’re in reasonable humor is that we know we’re in for… Read More

 Devices that plug into smartphones to augment the built-in sensors with additional smarts are continuing to make their way to market, many fueled by crowdfunding. Here’s another contender aiming to extend the capability of Android smartphones: a teeny breathalyzer called DrinkMate, currently seeking $40,000 on Kickstarter to make it to market by December. Read More

All the smartphone hype is currently around round watches. When LG and Samsung announced their first Android Wear smartwatches earlier this year, most pundits had a heard time getting excited about them — in part because everybody was still waiting for the round Moto 360. Since then, we haven’t heard all that much about the square watches from those two manufacturers,… Read More

 Editor’s note: Dan Kaplan helps startups tell their stories. He’s done marketing for Twilio, Asana, and Salesforce and blogs about marketing, growth, and storytelling at Threadling. It always breaks my heart a little when the startups with the most radiant potential hit their troughs of disillusionment and then cash out to a deep-pocketed buyer. This is not because I begrudge… Read More

 Anonymity: it’s all the rage–Whisper, Secret–and it’s rage-inducing. A Brazilian court has ruled that Secret must be removed from app stores there, and existing installs remotely wiped. The UK’s House of Lords has recommended the end of online anonymity. As usual, judges and politicians don’t understand technology. Anonymity can used for awful things, yes;… Read More